What Is the International Date Line?

The invisible line in the Pacific where the calendar changes day.

The International Date Line runs roughly along the 180th meridian in the Pacific Ocean. Crossing it westward moves you forward one calendar day; crossing eastward moves you back one.

It zig-zags to keep island groups and countries on a single date. That is why Samoa and American Samoa are 25 hours apart despite being neighbours.

What this means for scheduling

A Monday morning call in Los Angeles is already Tuesday morning in Auckland. Whenever a conversion here lands on a different calendar day, the result says so explicitly rather than leaving you to work it out.

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