Spring forward for daylight saving time on March 10

Unless you live in Hawaii or in certain parts of Arizona, the special month has finally come to fast forward time. Most Americans will wake up to a Sunday morning feeling groggy and annoyed, knowing that they lost an hour of their precious sleep.

March 10 marks the beginning of daylight saving time, making the evenings brighter than usual. Many blame Benjamin Franklin for the idea, in which he wrote in a letter for the “Journal de Paris” in 1784. In the letter, he suggested for Parisians to change their sleep schedule to save money on candles and lamp oils. However, the idea originally came from George Hudson, a New Zealand entomologist, who in 1895 wanted more daylight in the evenings. According to National Geographic, he wanted extra hours after work to go bug hunting.

Germany was the first country to adopt daylight saving time to conserve fuel needed to produce weapons and bombs for World War I in their factories on April 30, 1916. Soon, the United States started to follow the tradition and started the first seasonal time shift two years later. In the U.S, daylight saving time officially starts at 2 a.m. This time was specifically selected because most people were in their homes when the change occurred.

There are only two days in a year where we will have to change our clocks: the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November. Out of the 365 days we have in a year, daylight saving time takes up 238 days, while Standard time takes up 127 days. We all want a day full of 25 hours, but we will have to wait long, several months to “fall back” to our winter schedule that will only last for short, four months. So in the meantime, let us get ready to set our clocks an hour ahead to spring forward before bedtime on March 9.