NavList:

Some trivia you may want to pass along to your friends who think your interest in historical navigation has no relationship whatsoever to the real world:

The New York City, Times Square New Year's Eve "ball drop" is a modern variant on a 19th century aid to navigation. "Time balls" used to be relatively common in ports around the world. When the ball dropped, usually timed by an electric signal from a major astronomical observatory, the exact time could be seen for miles and miles around, and navigators could check the error of their chronometers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_ball

Also, there's a story running on nbcnews.com that some of you may find entertaining. It includes this statement: "The celebration started small in places like Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, and Kiribati, an equator-straddling chain of islands in the Pacific, at 5 a.m. ET." Clearly the author looked up the wrong Christmas Island. The one that's an "Australian territory in the Indian Ocean" near Java would ring in the New Year at the same time as its geographic neighbors. The OTHER Christmas Island, which is one of the islands of Kiribati (hence the statement is actually redundant) is way out in the Central Pacific, just north of the equator in the longitude of Hawaii. And that little speck of land rang in the New Year fully 24 hours before Hawaii will do so.

Happy New Year to the NavList community. :)

-FER

----------------------------------------------------------------
NavList message boards and member settings: www.fer3.com/NavList
Members may optionally receive posts by email.
To cancel email delivery, send a message to NoMail[at]fer3.com
----------------------------------------------------------------