Up for a little extra sleep tonight? 2021 is the 103rd anniversary of the first Daylight Savings Time practice of turning our clocks back one hour.
Daylight Saving Time (DST) ends at 2:00 a.m. this Sunday, November 7. Turn the clocks back one hour if you live in most of the United States (most of Arizona and Hawaii don’t observe DST).
While ancient civilizations adjusted daily schedules to the sun, giving more flexibility than DST, the United States didn’t adopt DST like some of Europe and Canada until 1918.
Californians voted to get rid of daylight saving time in 2018, so why haven’t we stopped changing our clocks? The federal government needs to decide if springing forward or falling back is the time everyone will use, so for now we keep standard and DST in California.
This time of year serves as a good reminder to change smoke detector batteries. The batteries should be replaced twice a year, so an easy way to remember to change them is to do it as DST begins and ends.
Almost 3,000 people die each year from structure fires, and many of these deaths can be prevented with working smoke detectors.
So remember: change the time, change your battery!