By the time the ball drops in Times Square tonight, the people of the Line Islands will be almost a full day into 2026. The islands are in the Pacific Ocean, south of Hawaii. But they’re just across the International Date Line. That makes the islands the first place to see the new year.

The Date Line is needed because the time gets an hour earlier for every time zone west, and an hour later for every time zone east. Without a place to reset the date, time just wouldn’t make sense.

The line mostly runs down the middle of the Pacific – half way around the globe from Greenwich, England, which is the starting point for the time system.

But individual countries can set their own time zones. So the line zigzags between Alaska and Russia. And near the equator, it jumps more than a thousand miles to the east.

That extension came three decades ago. The island nation of Kiribati changed its time zones. That made it easier for the country to do business with Australia, which is west of the Date Line.

The country’s easternmost extension is the Line Islands. So the date changes there first – making the Line Islands the first places on Earth to ring in the new year.

American Samoa is farther west than the Line Islands. But its time zone puts it on the opposite side of the Date Line – making it one of the last places to change the calendar.

Script by Damond Benningfield