Get ready to set your clocks back an hour Sunday. Mexico and Europe already have

If you’re traveling to Mexico or European countries this week, you should know that daylight saving time ended there last Sunday. That means you need to set your watch back an hour (unless your smartphone or Fitbit do this for you).

Most Americans don’t change to standard time until 2 a.m. this coming Sunday. Mexicans and Europeans turned their clocks back an hour last Sunday.

Why the difference?

In 2007, the U.S. changed the dates of daylight saving to begin the second Sunday of March and end on the first Sunday of November. Before that, we were pretty much in sync with the rest of the world, give or take a day.

Some exceptions: In the U.S., Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands never switch to daylight saving. Neither does China or Japan.

If you don’t like seasonal time changes, you can blame Benjamin Franklin. He wrote an essay in 1784 that suggested if folks got out of bed earlier and used natural light to go about their day, they would save energy, which in his day meant candles.

Thunder Bay in Ontario, Canada, was the first adopter of daylight saving in 1908. Germany was the first country to do so in 1916 as a way to save fuel during World War I, according to timeanddate.com.

ALSO

Colorado’s ski train takes you from Denver to the slopes in one easy ride

This rugged Death Valley road is a white-knuckle challenge for four-wheelers

To see these Mojave Desert petroglyphs, you first have to pass a Navy screening