The country that erased a day

Kiribati is a country of islands scattered across the Pacific, and for decades it had a problem all of its own: the International Date Line cut it in two. While it was Monday in the capital, it was still Sunday in the eastern islands. Government and businesses shared only four working days a week; the rest of the time, half the country rested while the other half worked.

In 1995 they solved it by decree: the date line was bent eastwards to wrap around the whole archipelago. To square the calendar, the eastern islands jumped straight from 30 December 1994 to 1 January 1995. The 31st of December simply never happened there.

As a bonus, Kiribati gained the most advanced time zone on the planet, UTC+14, and has been the first country in the world to greet every New Year since. Nobody gets up earlier for a toast.