Greenwich

My whole life I have heard of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT or Zulu time) as the basis upon which all of the times in the world are set. US East Coast time, where I lived most of my life, is GMT-5. For example, when it is 10:00 AM here in the UK, it is 5:00 AM there. When you listen to the BBC at the top of the hour you hear those tones, that is signaling Greenwich Mean Time and many people set their clocks by it. So we had to see the place. Unfortunately we were about 48 years late, because the Greenwich Observatory stopped being the place where time was kept in 1961 when they turned it over to science and started relying on the atomic clocks. But we still use the time zones, and the Prime Meridian is a geographical thing, and obviously hasn't moved.

Here it is, the Prime Meridian line. There was a long line to get your picture straddling the line, so we just took the shot beside it - those really aren't Allen legs standing on the line.

The building on the left below is one of the observatory buildings, I thought it was cool looking. The other two shots are of the main building of the Royal Observatory. You see the spire on top of the building with the red ball on it. Every day at 1:00, the ball rises up that pole and drops. The precise instant it hits the bottom is 1:00PM GMT. They told us that boats used to anchor in the harbor below to watch the ball drop and set the ship's clocks.

The view from the Royal Observatory. You can see two domes, they are on top of what started as a palace, then became the Royal Naval College. The building was designed by Christopher Wren one of the most famous architects in London. The domes are identical to the one on St Paul's Cathedral but much smaller. He was practicing prior to building the real one. (not a joke)

They had some wonderful astronomy displays, but this was cool. "The Oldest Thing You Will Ever Touch."

Being the home of GMT and the Observatory, the gift shops sold a variety of time keeping and navigation devices. The navigational device below caught my eye, it is the Cape Hatteras (NC) light house.