It was a bad turn of events

With the new Patek Philippe Replica World Time 5330G-010 on my wrist, the mishap might not have happened. I can smile about it now, but in 1995 it was extremely embarrassing for us, I mean Gerd-Rüdiger Lang and me. Two people who had been working with watches and timekeeping for years traveled with United Airlines from San Francisco to Tokyo. Departure at 9:35 a.m., arrival at 12:50 p.m. Flight time 11 hours and 15 minutes.
What we specialists in the pre-smartphone era had missed: the Boeing 747 did not land in the Japanese capital until the following day. We overslept in the air at the appointment we had thoughtlessly arranged with Yosuke Saitoh for 10 a.m. The reason, and we had not taken this into account when planning the trip, was that we were crossing the date line heading west.

Since that incident, I have known that, according to the agreements of the International Meridian Conference of October 1884, one loses a whole day in this way, but gains one on trips in an easterly direction, provided one stays in Hawaii, for example.

Incidentally, only when it is 12 noon in Greenwich near London do all places on our globe have the same date. The International Date Line along the 180th longitude runs exclusively through water, of which the Pacific is by far the largest.

The reason for this rule is quite simple: when flying across time zones, the time shifts by one hour for every 15 degrees of longitude. And the hours accumulated in this way obviously have to be eliminated somehow.