Daylight Saving Time begins early this Sunday.
Some people love the time change, other people grouse about having to spring forward an hour and then fall back again in November.
And that’s pretty much the history of Daylight Saving Time.
People have been complaining about the time change, or the lack thereof, since it first came up.
The proposal that led to DST came from George Vernon Hudson of New Zealand.
His day job was with the postal service, but his passion was collecting and studying insects.
Hudson wrote multiple books about entomology.
In 1895, he presented a paper that a seasonal time shift would let people make better use of daylight hours (and more importantly, give him more time to work with insects).
People were not on board at first, but a couple decades later, they found a reason: World War I.
Countries needed to conserve as much fuel as possible for the war effort, and changing clocks meant people would use less electric light.
But it was also a big boost for many industries.
If it was still light out at the end of the work day, people might go out more and spend more money.
There was a boom in golf ball sales after Daylight Saving Time began, for example.
Later on, the barbecue industry saw big profits as well.
And the candy industry pushed to extend DST through at least Halloween, so that people would buy more candy for trick or treaters.
But, of course, the time change has always had opponents, too.
Farmers have said DST is very disruptive to their animals.
Health advocates say there are actually more heart attacks, strokes and car accidents around time changes, and that DST can be bad for some people with depression.
Some energy experts say it may not actually save energy these days anyway.
One thing’s for sure: whether we’re in standard time or daylight saving time, entomologists are carrying on learning about the world’s insects.
And that sounds like what George Vernon Hudson would have wanted after all.
Around this time in 1998, the UK’s House of Commons did away with a longstanding tradition.
The rules said any member who wished to raise a point of order had to do so “seated and covered,” meaning they had to wear a hat.
Lawmakers kept communal hats on hand in case they were needed… until they decided, why not just do away with the rule?
How a New Zealand insect hunter created daylight saving time (The Week)
Commons toppers are old hat (The Independent)