If you’re one of the 61% of Americans who’d like to stop resetting the clock twice a year, it might be time to move to Arizona or Hawaii. The Grand Canyon and Aloha states don’t observe daylight saving time (except for the Navajo Nation in Arizona), meaning they don’t fall back in November or spring forward in March. Rather, they live in what’s surely a permanent state of bliss, never having to remember whether the latest clock change means they’re getting an hour less of sleep the next night or an hour more; nor are they subject to drastic, overnight differences in what time the sun rises and sets.
This common misconception gets it completely wrong, as farmers and agricultural workers have largely been opposed to DST since its conception. The practice was originally implemented during World War I to save energy.
Though polls like the one cited above consistently show that Americans are tired of changing their clocks, making daylight saving time permanent is just as popular as ignoring it altogether — one poll showed 59% of respondents were in favor of the idea. The Senate unanimously passed a bill to do just that in March 2022, though the Sunshine Protection Act, as it’s called, has yet to move forward in the House. Long after Benjamin Franklin half-seriously proposed a form of it in 1784, DST was formally adopted in America via the Standard Time Act of 1918 as a wartime measure. It was abolished in 1919, with Congress overriding a veto from Woodrow Wilson, but then became the law of the land on a federal level when Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act on April 14, 1966. States retained the option of remaining on standard time — but only two were bold enough to do so.
U.S. time zones are overseen by the Department of Transportation.
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Phoenix, Arizona, is the most populous state capital.
Though it’s not always thought of as one of our major cities, Phoenix is the most populous state capital in the U.S. In fact, it’s the only one with more than a million residents. With a population of about 1.7 million, Phoenix is approaching becoming twice as large as Austin, which ranks second for most populous state capitals and is rapidly closing in on the million mark. Phoenix also ranks fifth overall in the country when it comes to largest cities, with the other four most populous cities — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston — not being the seat of their respective state governments. Rounding out the top five capitals are Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Denver, Colorado. On the opposite end of the spectrum is humble Montpelier, which is home to fewer than 8,000 Vermonters.
Michael Nordine
Staff Writer
Michael Nordine is a writer and editor living in Denver. A native Angeleno, he has two cats and wishes he had more.
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