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Singapore Has Used Seven Different Time Zones in One Century

Most cities on this list have changed their clock once or twice. Singapore has done it seven times.

• Before June 1905: GMT+6:55:25 — Singapore mean time, calculated from the sun
• June 1905 – December 1932: GMT+7:00
• January 1933 – August 1941: GMT+7:20
• September 1941 – February 1942: GMT+7:30
• February 1942 – September 1945: GMT+9:00
• September 1945 – December 1981: GMT+7:30
• January 1982 – today: GMT+8:00

That fifth line is the Japanese Occupation. For three and a half years Singapore was moved onto Tokyo time, an hour and a half ahead of where it had been — because a time zone is a straightforward way of drawing an empire's borders through the day as well as across the map.

There is a small, human record of what that meant. In 1985, forty years after the Occupation ended, a reader wrote to a Singapore newspaper asking for help: they had been born during those years, their birth certificate recorded a time of 5:30 pm, and they wanted to know what time they had actually been born.

The clock: the last change is the one Singapore lives with now, and it was somebody else's decision.

On 31 December 1981, Malaysia unified its own two time zones by moving Peninsular Malaysia forward half an hour. Singapore followed the next day, citing business and travel schedules, and has been on UTC+8 ever since.

UTC+8 is built for the 120th meridian. Singapore sits at 104° east. The city therefore runs about sixty-five minutes ahead of its own sun — a wider gap than Istanbul's, and among the largest on this entire list.

You can see it if you know to look. Singapore is almost exactly on the equator, where sunrise should be near six and sunset near six, all year, forever. Instead the sun comes up around seven and goes down around seven.

An equatorial city with the most predictable sky on Earth, running permanently an hour late, because of a decision taken in Kuala Lumpur on New Year's Eve.

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