The Answer to 'Where Is the International Date Line?' Depends on How Much Time You Have

Traveling across the International Date Line (IDL) can get weird—seriously weird. Let’s say you’re looking for a change in scenery from the Edenic climes of Auckland and fall smitten with the whale-filled waters of Vancouver. As far as long-haul flights go, this one doesn’t seem too out of the ordinary—if you fly from New Zealand on a Tuesday, you’ll land in Canada the Monday before since you crossed the IDL from the left. But that’s assuming you’ve crossed the line just once. Because of its jigsaw shape, your journey across the Pacific would more so resemble a game of time-travel hopscotch. On this hypothetical flight, you could easily flip between dates as many as five times. All this to say, asking yourself where the International Date Line is, is only natural. And as it turns out, the origin story of this Parasaurolophus-headed imaginary line is more complicated than you’d think. Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan’s surviving crew on the Victoria first documented the time-skipping phenomenon of global travel on Thursday July 10, 1522, whilst stopped at Cabo Verde. On track to become the first expedition to circumnavigate the world, the Magellan sailing