MUNDANE MYSTERIES: Why Do We Observe Daylight Savings Time?
Whether it’s “Springing Forward” or “Falling Back”, you’ve probably wondered at one point or another, “What even is Daylight Saving Time? And why does it exist?”
Founding father Benjamin Franklin was actually the first to suggest DST, back in 1784, as a money-saving ploy in one of his satirical essays. But, while Franklin was mostly joking, others who proposed the idea later on were 100% serious.
In 1916, when primarily coal-produced energy needed to be conserved during World War I, Germany was the first country to observe Daylight Saving Time. Great Britain & other countries in Europe followed suit before we got in on it here in the US in 1918. It got dropped pretty much everywhere after the war, but was revived only a few short decades later during World War II.
After that war ended, America once again abandoned Daylight Saving Time…well, sort of. You see, without any official legislation, the country fell into a sort of hodgepodge of conflicting practices. For instance: Iowa had twenty-three different pairs of start & end dates for Daylight Saving Time by 1965, while other areas of the US didn’t observe it at all.
So, in 1966, Congress ended all that madness when it passed the “Uniform Time Act”, which mandated that Daylight Saving Time would begin at 2am on the last Sunday in April & end at 2am on the last Sunday in October. Then, almost 40 years later, the 2005 “Energy Policy Act” extended Daylight Saving Time by shifting the dates to the 2nd Sunday of March & the 1st Sunday of November. Not all states & territories were actually required to observe it, however, and some decided not to. Heck, Arizona & Hawaii still don’t.
Throughout Daylight Saving Time’s history, its supposed benefits have always been that it cuts down on electricity use & conserves energy in general. But a lot of experts don’t actually think those facts check out. Some studies suggest that, while the extra daylight hour might decrease electricity use for lighting, it also means people could be keeping their air conditioners running more & actually increasing overall electricity usage. Never mind that it’s a major bummer losing an hour of sleep every Spring. Thankfully, though, we’re at the better end of the deal & get to claim an extra hour of shut-eye this weekend.
Got a Mundane Mystery you’d like solved? Send me a message via social media (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
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Wake Up Crew Highlights: November 4, 2021
MUNDANE MYSTERIES: What Is A Placebo?
When people heard the word “PLACEBO” back in the 1200s, there were no sugar pills or clinical trials. Actually, “placebo” had nothing at all to do with medicine back then. In reality, for members of the Roman Catholic Church (which was most folks back in those days), “placebo” would more likely have made them think about both God & death.
In Latin, “placebo” means “I will please”. “Placebo” was actually the very first word at the beginning of the “Vespers” portion of an evening prayer Catholics recited for folks who’d died, called the “Office for the Dead”. (FYI: The whole line was “I will please the Lord in the land of the living.”) It wasn’t long before folks were just saying the word “placebo” to refer to the prayer as a whole.
By the 1300s, though, placebo had taken on a secondary definition that, while different, stemmed from its original Latin meaning. Basically, at that time if you would’ve said someone was singing, making, or playing “placebo”, that would’ve implied that they were going way over-the-top the flatter someone else. Some folks would even just cut to the quick & call a person a “placebo” outright. Which, in that context, meant “a flatterer, sycophant, or parasite” according the Oxford English Dictionary.
It makes sense, then, that “placebo”, that flattery used to make someone feel good regardless of the truth, ultimately ended up in the world of medicine. It was in the 1700s that “placebo” came to define any drug or treatment intended to make someone feel better, even if it had no medical efficacy whatsoever. The phrase “placebo effect”, however, didn’t become common until a little while later, in the early 20th century.
The 1900s also saw the genesis of placebo’s evil twin, “nocebo”, which is Latin for “I will harm”. Literally the exact opposite of “placebo”, a medicinal “nocebo” is a worthless treatment that causes a patient to feel worse somehow. Thankfully, though, “nocebo” just hasn’t caught on in the same way “placebo” has. I wonder why? I mean…call me crazy, but maybe it’s because most people prefer to feel good instead of bad or worse. An off-the-wall suggestion, I know. But hey…at least now, hopefully, you feel good knowing where placebo came from & what it means today.
Now…wanna feel good about helping solve another Mundane Mystery in the near future? Message me with your question on my socials (@AndyWebbRadioVoice), or shoot me an email at [email protected].
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