How the Desire to Do Business With New Zealand Caused Samoa to Skip December 30, 2011
Half as Interesting explains in great detail how a shift in the official time zone for the island country of Samoa came about due to a desire to have closer ties with New Zealand and Australia than they did with the United States. Before 2011, Samoa was just three hours behind California, which made US trade fairly simple to conduct, but left a small window in which to do business with their closest neighbors. So they waited until the last days of the year in 2011 to change their time zone from Prime Meridian UTC-11 to Antemeridian UTC+13:00, which caused December 30, 2011 to be cancelled.
On Monday in New Zealand it was Sunday in Samoa while on Friday in Samoa it was Saturday
in New Zealand. "the Prime Minister decided to make some changes. There were 23 hours of time change between Samoa and Auckland before 2011 but, just after 11:59 pm on December 29, 2011, the clocks in Samoa advanced to 12 midnight on December 31, 2011 therefore entirely skipping December 30th and putting the country only one hour ahead of Auckland.