Does the sun still never set on the United Kingdom?

But economist Peter Hammond, guesting at Debraj Ray's blog argues that the old chesnut that "the sun never sets over the British Empire" is still technically true. There's ... The question is "on midwinter's day in the southern hemisphere, does the sun set over Pitcairn before it rises over Diego Garcia?". read more

The phrase was that ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire’. As the Empire spanned the globe and accounted for 25% of the planet (at its peak), the sun was always shining on at least one part of the empire all the time. So the expression is not relevant to just the United Kingdom. read more

In 1906, William Jennings Bryan wrote,"If we can not boast that the sun never sets on American territory, we can find satisfaction in the fact that the sun never sets on American philanthropy"; after which, The New York Times received letters attempting to disprove his presupposition. read more

Thus, the idea that the sun never set was true, in a way: some part of the Empire was always experiencing daylight. However, the saying also had a more figurative meaning: the idea that the British Empire was an eternal system, that it would never suffer decline. read more

The saying wasn’t that the sun never sets on the United Kingdom; the saying was that the sun never sets on the British Empire. The reason for the saying was that there was a colony or dominion of the British Empire in every time zone in the world, so there was literally never a time when the sun wasn’t shining on some part of the British Empire. read more

Technically, the Sun Still Never Sets Over the British Empire Despite all the pageantry of the last two days, it is a truth universally acknowledged that the British Empire ain’t what it used to be. read more