The tiny South Pacific island of Samoa will lose a day in 2011, in a move aimed at strengthening trade ties with Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
When the clock strikes midnight on 29 December, Samoa will skip 30 December and move straight to New Years Eve, 31 December.
The skip across the dateline comes 119 years after US traders persuaded Samoa to align its times with the US-controlled American Samoa as well as the US in order to enable trading links with California.
At that time Samoa celebrated 4 July twice, with a nod to American Independence day. Jekyll and Hyde Author Robert Louis Stevenson was living there with his family at the time. His mother, Margaret, wrote of the date change: "We are ordered to keep two Mondays in this week."
However Prime Minister Tuila'epa Sailele Malielegaoi has decided that skipping 30 December will modernise the nation’s economy and benefit Samoan's 186,000 citizens.
Trading links will be strengthened: when it’s Monday and businesses are revving up for the working week in Australasia, sleepy Samoans are still luxuriating in a Sunday lie-in.
"In doing business with New Zealand and Australia, we're losing out on two working days a week," Samoa's Prime Minister said.
"While it's Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand and when we're at church on Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane.
"Today we do a lot more business with New Zealand and Australia, China and Pacific Rim countries such as Singapore."
There has been some opposition to the move, both from employers complaining that they will have to pay their workers for a day’s work they havent done, as well as from Seventh Day Adventists who state that it would anger God to have a day struck from the calendar.
Some tourist operators are arguing that Samoa will lose its unique selling point as the last place in the world to see the sun set.