As part of New Spain, Caroline Islands belonged to Captaincy General of the Philippines, which used the date of the western hemisphere and had the same day of the week as the Americas. After Mexico gained its independence from Spain on September 27, 1821, Caroline Islands began using the same day of the week as Asia and to follow the eastern hemisphere at the end of 1844. The switch was achieved by removing Tuesday, December 31, 1844 from the calendar, so Monday, December 30, 1844 was immediately followed by Wednesday, January 1, 1845. That change redrew the International Date Line from being west to east of the whole archipelago to realign itself from American to Asian dates.[citation needed]
Before time zones were introduced, every place used local observation of the sun to set its clocks, which meant that every location used a different local mean time based on its longitude. For example, Kolonia, a coastal town and the capital of Pohnpei State at the time, at longitude 158°13′E, had a local time equivalent to UTC-13:27:08 under the date of the western hemisphere and UTC+10:32:52 under the eastern hemisphere.[citation needed]
In August 1945, Chuuk Time (CHUT) was established as UTC+10 and Pohnpei Standard Time (PONT) as UTC+11.[citation needed]
^The term UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) begin in use just after the introduction of Unix Time on January 1, 1970. In those days before 1970, the GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) was the term being used.
