Which island nation is the only country in the world to be located in all four hemispheres?
UNIQUE FACT – This small island nation in the Pacific Ocean is also part of the world’s most advanced time zone.
If we divide the Earth along the Equator and the Prime Meridian, only one country in the world is situated on both sides of these imaginary lines: Kiribati. This small island state in Oceania, composed of 33 islands, has territories both north and south of the zero-degree latitude (the Equator) and both east and west of the 180th meridian (also called the antimeridian).
With a maritime area of 3.5 million square kilometers (as large as India), the Republic of Kiribati has another unique feature: for a long time, it was one of the only countries traversed by the International Date Line. Until 1995, the eastern part of the country could be almost a day “behind” the western part. « It was the world’s largest time difference (23 hours), as when the sun rose on Sunday in Tarawa, the capital located in the west, Saturday had just begun on Christmas Island in the east, » notes Encyclopædia Universalis.
A Country Threatened by Rising Sea Levels
For administrative reasons, the government of Kiribati decided in 1995 to move the International Date Line eastward. This explains why the UTC+14 time zone is not a straight line but a zigzag, to include the easternmost islands. Since then, Kiribati’s approximately 130,000 inhabitants all live on the same calendar date but across three different time zones (UTC+12 in the west to UTC+14 in the east).
This peculiarity makes Kiribati the country that is the most “ahead” of the rest of the world and one of the first to celebrate the New Year. The uninhabited Caroline Island is even nicknamed the « Millennium Island » because it was « the first land where the sun rose in the third millennium. » Interestingly, there is a 24-hour time difference between Christmas Island (UTC+12) in eastern Kiribati and Honolulu (UTC-10), the capital of the U.S. state of Hawaii, even though they are on the same longitude!
The few tourists who visit Kiribati (only around 12,000 per year) are drawn to its white sandy beaches and coral reefs. However, like other Pacific island nations (Tuvalu, Vanuatu…), Kiribati could be among the first countries to disappear due to rising sea levels. Its highest point is just 81 meters above sea level.
Source: lefigaro
