UTC: How Greenwich mean time became the world standard

Interestingly, article fails to mention John Harrison [1], the inventor of marine chronometer. There was a rivalry between Maskelyne and him, one considering lunar positions to be the best method to solve longitude problem, and the other believing that the accurate timepiece is the answer. You may say that Harriosn won at the end, but it was kind of bitter victory. Article quotes praise from Cook, but on next voyages Cook also tested chronometers made according to Harrison's design and praised them as well. If you are into this stuff there is a book "Longitude" by Dava Sobel.

For those visiting London (or who live here), I highly recommend a visit to Greenwich. There are several museums, including one at the Royal Observatory, a planetarium, a brewery that sells its own creations at the naval college and a huge park for those rare moments of sun.<p><a href="http://www1.rmg.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">http://www1.rmg.co.uk/</a>

Quoting:<p><pre><code> ... moon's precise motion through the sky is anything but regular. Tugged as it is variously by the earth and sun and following an oblong orbit ... </code></pre> An "oblong" orbit? Really?

Sometimes, it seems like the world operates in 3 time zones: UTC, China time, and Pacific (SV/Redmond) time. These time zones are 8 hours apart.

I feel like we lucked out with the international dateline being exactly half way around the world from the observatory -- were it not for the random chance of geography, the dateline could have easily ended up in the middle of a populated landmass.