Daylight Saving Time starts at 2 a.m. Sunday, March 10. That means you’ll “spring ahead” and move your clocks forward one hour—and, unfortunately, lose that hour of sleep.
The benefit is that we’ll get more sunlight later in the evening and it’s a pleasant sign that spring is just around the corner. (Spring 2013 officially starts on Wednesday, March 20.)
While originally proposed by Benjamin Franklin as a way to save candles, Daylight Savings Time officially began in 1918. It was off again until 1942, when it was reinstalled during World War II to conserve energy, and then not celebrated past 1945.
The Uniform Time Act of 1966, however, made Daylight Savings Time a standard practice, delineating Daylight Savings Time to start on the last Sunday of April and end on the last Sunday in October, according to Discovery News.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed those dates to 2 a.m. on both the second Sunday of March and the first Sunday in November each year, which we now currently observe.
Certain areas of the United States do not observe Daylight Savings Time and those areas include Arizona, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa.
