Talk about a lost weekend.
The nearly 3,000 Americans living on this remote Pacific atoll will have a good excuse for not remembering Saturday night: There wasn't one.Residents were going to bed Friday night and waking up Sunday morning because at midnight - 6 a.m. MDT Saturday - Kwajalein was jumping from one side of the international dateline to the other.
"August 21 will be nonexistent on Kwajalein," said Roy Clemans, an Army spokesman.
The Marshall Islands, a group of about 100 islets of which Kwajalein is the largest, sit west of the international dateline. But Kwa-ja-lein, which is about 300 miles west of the line, had synchronized its day of the week with the U.S. mainland, to the east, about 40 years ago when the U.S. Army established a missile test range here.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands requested the latest change so all its islets will be on the same side of the dateline.
Kwajalein's work week will shift to Tuesday through Saturday, the mainland's Monday through Friday. Church services will still be held on Sunday, which will seem like Saturday as it's the first weekend day off.