Pacific Vortex: 2100 hours this evening and more

pg 74

"I'd say 2100 hours this evening, sir."

The 24-hour clock is a convention of time keeping in which the day runs from midnight to midnight and is divided into 24 hours, indicated by the hours passed since midnight, from 0 to 23. This system is the most commonly used time notation in the world today. The 12-hour clock is, however, still dominant in a handful of countries, and is still used in official situations, and for things such as timetables and TV schedules, in Australia, Canada (except Quebec), the Philippines, the United States, and Colombia. The 24-hour notation is popularly referred to as military time or astronomical time in the United States and Canada. It is also the international standard notation of time (ISO 8601).

In the practice of medicine, the 24-hour clock is generally used in documentation of care as it prevents any ambiguity as to when events occurred in a patient's medical history.

History
Paolo Uccello's Face with Four Prophets/Evangelists (1443) in the Florence Cathedral
The 24 hour tower clock in Venice that lists hours 1 to 12 twice

The 24-hour time system has been used for centuries, primarily by scientists, astronomers, navigators, and horologists. There are many surviving examples of clocks built using the 24-hour system, including the famous Orloj in Prague, and the Shepherd gate clock at Greenwich.[citation needed]

At the International Meridian Conference in 1884, Sandford Fleming proposed:

That this universal day is to be a mean solar day; is to begin for all the world at the moment of mean midnight of the initial meridian, coinciding with the beginning of the civil day and date of that meridian; and is to be counted from zero up to twenty-four hours.

This resolution was adopted by the conference.

According to a report in the London Times in 1886, the 24-hour clock was in use on the Canadian Pacific Railway train at Port Arthur.

The earliest country to introduce the 24-hour system nationally was Italy, in 1893. Other European countries followed: France adopted it in 1912 (the French army in 1909), followed by Denmark (1916), and Greece (1917). By 1920, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Switzerland had switched, followed by Turkey (1925), and Germany (1927). By the early 1920s, many countries in Latin America had also adopted the 24-hour clock. Some of the railways in India had switched before the outbreak of the war.

During World War I, the British Royal Navy adopted the 24-hour clock in 1915, and the Allied armed forces followed soon after, with the British Army switching officially in 1918. The Canadian armed forces first started to use the 24-hour clock in late 1917. In 1920, the US Navy was the first US organization to adopt the system; the US Army, however, did not officially adopt the 24-hour clock until World War II, on July 1 1942.

In Britain, the use of the 24-hour clock in daily life has grown steadily since the beginning of the 20th century, although attempts to make the system official failed more than once. In 1934, the BBC switched to the 24-hour clock for broadcast announcements and programme listings. The experiment was halted after five months following a lack of enthusiasm from the public, and the BBC has used the 12-hour clock ever since. In the same year, the US airlines Pan American World Airways Corporation and Western Airlines both adopted the 24-hour clock.

British Rail and London Transport switched to the 24-hour clock for timetables in 1964.

In 2005, BBC Weather television forecasts used the 12-hour notation for several months after its graphical revamp. After complaints from the public, however, this was switched to 24-hour notation

Only a seagull, perched on a wooden piling, returned his stare.

Gulls (often informally called seagulls) are birds in the family Laridae. They are most closely related to the terns (family Sternidae) and only distantly related to auks, skimmers, and more distantly to the waders. Until the twenty-first century most gulls were placed in the genus Larus, but this arrangement is now known to be polyphyletic, leading to the resurrection of several genera.

Gulls are typically medium to large birds, usually grey or white, often with black markings on the head or wings. They typically have harsh wailing or squawking calls, stout, longish bills, and webbed feet. Most gulls, particularly Larus species, are ground-nesting carnivores, which will take live food or scavenge opportunistically. Live food often includes crabs and small fish. Gulls have prophylactic unhinging jaws which allow them to consume large prey. Apart from the kittiwakes, gulls are typically coastal or inland species, rarely venturing far out to sea[2] The large species take up to four years to attain full adult plumage, but two years is typical for small gulls. Large White-Headed Gulls are typically long-lived birds, with a maximum age of 49 years recorded for the Herring Gull.

Gulls nest in large, densely packed noisy colonies. They lay two to three speckled eggs in nests composed of vegetation. The young are precocial, being born with dark mottled down, and mobile upon hatching.

Gulls—the larger species in particular—are resourceful, inquisitive and intelligent birds, demonstrating complex methods of communication and a highly developed social structure. For example, many gull colonies display mobbing behaviour, attacking and harassing would-be predators and other intruders.

Certain species (e.g. the Herring Gull) have exhibited tool use behaviour, using pieces of bread as bait with which to catch goldfish, for example.[7] Many species of gull have learned to coexist successfully with humans and have thrived in human habitats.[8] Others rely on kleptoparasitism to get their food. Gulls have been observed preying on live whales, landing on the whale as it surfaces to peck out pieces of flesh.

His feet were encased in a pair of badly scuffed brogans

Brogan a term generally applied to any heavy, ankle-high shoe or boot, more specifically, any such boot worn by a soldier in at least the American Revolutionary War and the American Civil War. In the American revolution, the British soldiers wore brogans that were interchangeable with the left or right foot, supposedly allowing for even wear on the boots. During the civil war, the standard model of brogan worn by a soldier was the Model 1851 Jefferson, a square-toed model with four eyelets and leather laces.