Day Light Savings Time, and Facebook

At 2 a.m. on March 11, 2012, groggy Americans will turn their clocks forward one hour, marking the beginning of Daylight Saving Time (DST). The federal law that established "daylight time" in the United States does not require any area to observe daylight saving time. But if a state chooses to observe DST, it must follow the starting and ending dates set by the law. From 1986 to 2006 this was the first Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October, but starting in 2007, it is observed from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, adding about a month to daylight saving time. (See: New Federal Law.) Arizona and Hawaii and the territories of Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa are the only places in the US that do not observe DST but instead stay on standard time all year long. And if you’ve spent in the sweltering summer sun in those regions you can understand why residents don’t need another hour of sunlight.

Mark Zuckerberg, 23, founded Facebook while studying psychology at Harvard University. A keen computer programmer, Mr Zuckerberg had already developed a number of social-networking websites for fellow students, including Course match, which allowed users to view people taking their degree, and Facemash, where you could rate people's attractiveness. In 2004 Mr. Zuckerberg launched “the Facebook” as it was originally known the name taken from the sheets of paper distributed to freshman, profiling student and staff. Within 24 hours 1,200 Harvard students, had signed up, and after one month over half of the undergraduate population had a profile. The network was promptly extended to other Boston universities, the Ivy League and eventually all US universities. It became Facebook.com in August 2005 after the address was purchased for $200,000. US high schools could sign up from September 2005, then it began to spread worldwide, reaching UK universities the following month.