Daylight Saving Time

It’s almost time to spring forward!

Daylight saving time begins this Sunday, March 11, at 2:00 a.m. And yes, this is the one where you lose an hour of sleep. But don’t fret! That means you gain one more precious hour of sunlight at the end of the day to beat those end-of-winter doldrums.

So don’t forget to set any clocks that aren’t on a smart device ahead one hour before heading to bed Saturday night. And get ready to have your microwave display the wrong time for the next 8 months because you don’t want to break out the instruction manual.

Daylight saving time may not be the most thrilling day on your calendar, but the practice is celebrating it’s 100th birthday this year.

It was first enacted by the federal government as a way to save coal during World War I in the spring of 1918, and was only meant to exist during wartime. The practice was technically ended later that same year, but many regions continued to follow it, until eventually the government put the measure back in place in 1966.

The next major change came in 2007, when the Department of Transportation (DOT), which is surprisingly in charge of the practice, expanded daylight saving time to encompass about 65% of the year.