• foo@feddit.uk
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    7 天前

    Fun fact about these islands: they used to be 11 hours behind UTC, which put them on the same date as the US and almost a full day behind the rest of the Asian Pacific islands. So, they just re-drew the date line in a big curve to their East, so now they are 13 hours ahead of UTC and their date aligns with Asia instead of the US. Intuitively it seems impossible that anywhere could be more than 12 hours ahead or behind, but then Kiribati came along. Must have driven Santa mad having to entirely re-plan his route.

  • Sailor Anarres@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 天前

    Almost all of these are colonial names Paris named by a french priest, London by the same priest who named it in honor of his leasing it from the UK, banana by American soldiers, but Poland’s is less clear.

  • naught101@lemmy.world
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    7 天前

    Also note: it’s pronounced “Kiribas”, and yes that means the island is pronounced “Kirismas” - Christmas island (for the usual colonial reasons)

  • Hegar@fedia.io
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    7 天前

    Ok, firstly, those aren’t cities. That’s an atoll so those place names are more likely bars. Just so we’ve got the scale right.

    Specifically, that’s christmas island - kiritimati is pronunced “kirismas”. So that’s probably the name of the island in the middle, then the name of the nation (“kiribas”) underneath that.