The World’s First Country who Celebrate New Year Eve

VIVA – The New Year celebration is just coming soon. There is a country in the world who celebrate new year eve first, namely Kiritimati, Kiribati. After that are the Chatham Islands in New Zealand, Chukotka and Kamchatka in Russia, and Sydney Australia.

Meanwhile, Indonesia is the twelfth country with Jakarta being the first city to coincide with Bangkok, Thailand. Indonesia's position is below China with the cities of Hong Kong and Beijing. 

So, when Kiritimati celebrated the New Year, it was only 7 am in West Indonesian time in Jakarta. Whereas when the last city enters the New Year, Jakarta enters at 7 pm in West Indonesian time.

The last countries to celebrate the New Year are the small outer islands in the United States. Baker Island and Howland Island will celebrate at midnight GMT. But since the territory is uninhabited, there is not much celebration there.

Then, the second to last is American Samoa, 558 miles from Tonga, where locals and visitors celebrate for a full 24 hours.

Moreover, Kiribati is also one of the first places in the world to see the first rays of the rising Sun. Their time zone is 14 hours ahead of UTC, the world's furthest time zone. 

Kiribati is made up of three island groups, Gilbert Islands, Phoenix Island, and Line Island which are located 30 degrees east of 180 degrees longitude. Geographically, Line Island lies just south of the island of Hawaii in the United States and should logically be in the same time zone.

But it's not that simple as the International Dating Line is not straight, but rather a bit of a meander and over the years has been pushed around for various political and economic reasons.

Before 1995, Kiribati crossed the International Date Line with the eastern and western island groups having a 24-hour time difference.

This was seen as an annoying economic disruption, as there were only four days per week when both sides had to work together and the only days when government offices on the opposite side could conduct business.

To end this situation, Kiribati's president announced that from January 1, 1995, the International Dating Line would henceforth move eastward to encircle the country.

In doing so, Kiribati became the first country to welcome the rising rays of the Sun at the start of the third millennium. For celebrating the occasion, they even renamed Caroline Island to Millennium Island in 2000.