Samoa to skip Friday, lose Dec. 30, 2011, forever

Here's a telling tidbit for those who bewail America's declining influence in the world: Samoa is skipping Friday to get closer to China.

At midnight on Thursday, the Pacific island nation is doing the exact opposite of what it did in 1892, when it switched to the East of the international dateline and celebrated July 4 twice in order to fall more closely in line with Californian clocks. At the time, that made trading sense.

Read the whole story at the Christian Science Monitor.