Q: This year, daylight saving time will end on Sunday, November 5. In April of 1965, voters in this northeast Kansas community rejected a proposal to adopt daylight saving time on a 2-1 margin. Name the town that thought it was a capital idea to reject the clock-changing ritual?
A: Topeka
Daylight saving time in the United States is the practice of setting the clock forward by one hour in the spring, so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less. Clocks are then turned back one hour in the fall to standard time. Most areas of the U.S. observe daylight saving time (DST), but Hawaii and Arizona do not (except for the Navajo, who do observe daylight saving time on tribal lands in Arizona).
To be sure, Topeka does observe daylight saving time these days, even though voters rejected the idea back in 1965 (as reported by the Topeka State Journal).
(Lean more about Kansas through our online Kansas Trivia archive! Take a look.)
Last year, a Kansas state senator pushed a bill to get rid of daylight saving time in Kansas. In March of 2016, the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee heard testimony from Republican Senator Ty Masterson, of Andover, in favor of eliminating the time change. Masterson said there's little evidence that moving clocks forward an hour each spring saves energy or increases productivity, and it interrupts people's sleep cycles and could cause health problems. Lawmakers in other states also are considering proposals to move away from the twice-a-year ritual of changing clocks. Masterson’s proposal went nowhere.
Daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday in March and ends on the first Sunday in November, with the time changes taking place at 2 a.m. local time.
(Thanks to Nathan Pettengill, editor of Topeka Magazine, for assistance with this week's trivia question!)