In 1892 Samoa moved itself to the other side of the International Date Line, and to do it the islands lived Monday the 4th of July twice. The change was said to suit the American traders, whose calendar Samoa now shared, and the doubled day was American Independence Day. In 2011 Samoa moved back, to share a calendar with Australia and New Zealand, and this time a day had to go: Thursday the 29th of December was followed by Saturday the 31st, and Friday the 30th never happened there at all. So a country has had one day too many and one day too few, a hundred and nineteen years apart, and the books balance. What I keep turning over is that both times the date was not a fact about the islands. Nothing about the sun over Apia changed. It was a fact about who you most needed to be talking to on the same day.