Samoa switched timezones last year to better align with Eastern trading partners. In doing so, they skipped an entire calendar day to go from one side of the dateline to the other, becoming the last place on Earth to see the day out instead of the first. Stefany Anne Golberg took a closer look recently and found it to be an interesting reminder that time, though it seems inexorable and constant, is actually very flexible. China, for instance, spans 5 timezones but only observes one, and Russia has 9 timezones due to its internal politics and geography. See also: exploring Samoa's timezone shift through the lens of the sociology of time.