For timekeeping, Finland follows Eastern European Time (EET) during its
winter as standard time and Eastern European Summer Time (EEST) in the
summer as daylight saving time. EET is two hours ahead of Coordinated
Universal Time and EEST is three hours ahead. Finland adopted EET in
1921, and daylight saving time in its current form from 1981. Up to the
19th century, each locality used its own solar time, which could vary in
Finland by up to 31 minutes. In 1862, a mean time was adopted as a
single time zone for railway scheduling. Daylight saving time was first
attempted in 1942, abandoned as not useful, and introduced again in 1981
to align with neighbouring countries. In 2017, the Finnish parliament
voted to call on the European Union to abolish daylight saving time.
Finland's time zone is maintained by the VTT Technical Research Centre
of Finland and the Centre for Metrology and Accreditation, using an
atomic clock and hydrogen monitors. The 24-hour clock notation is used
in Finland.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Finland>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1798:
Outraged by the XYZ Affair, the United States rescinded its
treaties with France, resulting in the undeclared Quasi-War, fought
entirely at sea.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-War>
1954:
After the culmination of the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état,
Carlos Castillo Armas was sworn in as president of Guatemala.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castillo_Armas>
1963:
The secret police of Ngô Đình Nhu, brother and chief
political adviser of South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm,
attacked a group of American journalists who were covering a protest
during the Buddhist crisis.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Seven_Day_scuffle>
1983:
After writing a letter to Soviet premier Yuri Andropov,
American schoolgirl Samantha Smith visited the Soviet Union as
Andropov's personal guest, becoming known as "America's Youngest
Ambassador".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samantha_Smith>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
extenuate:
1. Of a person: emaciated, wasted, weakened; of the body or part of it:
atrophied, shrunken, withered.
2. Of a quality or thing: lessened, weakened.
3. Reduced to poverty; impoverished.
4. To make (something) less dense, or thinner; also, to lower the
viscosity of (something).
5. (archaic)
6. To make (someone or something) slender or thin; to emaciate, to
waste.
7. To underestimate or understate the importance of (something); to
underrate.
8. (specifically) To diminish or seek to diminish the extent or severity
of (a crime, guilt, a mistake, or something else negative) by making
apologies or excuses; to palliate.
9. (obsolete)
10. To beat or draw (a metal object, etc.) out so as to lessen the
thickness.
11. To reduce the quality or quantity of (something); to lessen or
weaken the force of (something).
12. To degrade (someone); to detract from (someone's qualities,
reputation, etc.); to depreciate, to disparage.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/extenuate>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
--Robert A. Heinlein
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_A._Heinlein>
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