| ▲ | fph 8 hours ago | |
The Greenwich meridian is not actually 100% arbitrary. It is a convenient location that does not split into two any significant landmasses. | ||
| ▲ | mapmeld 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
I don't think enough people talk about how lucky we are that the International Date Line can roughly follow a line of longitude 180 degrees from the Greenwich meridian. If you were on a planet with more land, or we could only draw it through the Atlantic or Australia, timezones would be a lot weirder. | ||
| ▲ | MrJohz 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
It does split off part of Russia, I believe. The Florence meridian works slightly better for avoiding splitting any landmasses. As I understand it, it's not the best location, it's just good enough and was very popular for historical reasons. | ||
| ▲ | notahacker 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | |
It's mostly a convenient location for a group based at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich to define... | ||