Word: 180th
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...century ago, the International Meridian Conference did Fiji a favor. The conferees laid out the international date line along the 180th meridian but put an eastward kink in it to keep the people of the far-flung islands of the Fijian archipelago on the same page of their day planners. Now Fijians are calling that good turn a bad one. Repudiating the date line as an artificial construct, they claim their country, which straddles the 180th line of longitude, will be the first to greet the year...
Right or wrong, Fijians are positively infected with me-first fever. The centerpiece of their New Year's Eve preparations is the installation of a Meridian Wall and monument along the 180th longitude, where it crosses Udu Point on the island of Vanua Levu. Sealed within the estimated 100,000 bricks of the wall will be vials containing messages from around the world. The wall will be one of the starting points of a Unity Torch Relay, beginning Dec. 25 and finishing at the capital, Suva, on New Year...