Some little errors

[Joseph S. Myers]

On Tue, 19 Dec 2000, Paul Eggert wrote:

> > From: "Ciro Discepolo" <discepol at tin.it>
> > Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 17:35:44 +0100
> 
> > From a lot of specialist books  (for example Le Corre's book or
> > Gabriel's book) I receive the information that in France, in the year
> > 1943, and precisely from October 4, there was  a double daylight saving
> > time.
> 
> Can you please give more precise references?  I'm not familiar with
> those books.

> > In Italy, after 1866, the whole nation was divided in three parts: the
> > continental part, the Sicily part and the Sardinia part, with three
> > different time zones. You can read about it in the Regio Decreto (king
> > decree) number 3224 in the year 1866.
> 
> I think I'll add a comment like this to the file, to help make things
> clearer:
> 
> # From Paul Eggert (2000-12-19):
> # Sicily and Sardinia each had their own time zones from 1866 to 1893.
> # During World War II, German-controlled Italy used German time.
> # But these events all occurred before our 1970 cutoff,
> # so we need to record only the time in Rome.
> 
> > But, if you have forgotten these items, it is even possible that there
> > are many others items left out?

Perhaps you might like to produce a detailed account along the lines of
http://student.cusu.cam.ac.uk/~jsm28/british-time/ for France and Italy?
That is, with detailed references to and analyses of all relevant laws,
past and present, with reference where appropriate to archives,
parliamentary proceedings, etc. to fill things out?

Officially published summary data cannot necessarily be relied upon; it is
essentially necessary to check through every year's indexes to laws/orders
for anything relevant (and to trace backwards references to laws amended
or repealed, etc.), including any local or regional laws if applicable,
and where in doubt about the precise effect or whether anything might have
been missed, to check any relevant archives (which may also provide some
colour, e.g. people complaining about the changes).  See for example some
of my messages in the tz list archives
(ftp://elsie.nci.nih.gov/pub/tzarchive.gz) about various records found in
the Public Record Office.

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
jsm28 at cam.ac.uk