Midnight

Midnight is the moment at which one day ends and the next begins. It lasts no time at all, which makes it the shortest event on the calendar and, by some distance, the best attended.^[1] It is the opposite of noon, and is darker, for the same reason.

Midnight is named after the middle of the night, which a 1951 survey actually located at 3:14 a.m. The survey team were awake at the time, and are believed to be the only people who have ever been there.

Which day?

Scholars disagree about which day midnight belongs to. The Ending School holds that it is 24:00, the last moment of the old day; the Beginning School holds that it is 00:00, the first moment of the new one. The Calendar Convention of 1883 settled the matter by assigning midnight to whichever day was not using it at the time.^[2]

The witching hour

Midnight is traditionally the hour when strange things happen. A study of 9,000 midnights found that the strangest thing to happen at most of them was a kettle clicking.^[3]

See also

• Noon – midnight with the lights on
• Hour – what midnight is the start of, briefly
• Yesterday – what today becomes at midnight
• Time zone – why it happens at different times
• Owl – the only one still up

References

1. Owl, O. (1951). “Where Is the Middle?”. Nocturnal Surveys 3.
2. Calendar Convention (1883). Minutes. Minute 0.
3. Yawn, Y. (2007). Nine Thousand Midnights. Late Press.