From several time zones away and from a different season, Andie Miller points us back in time to the year 1999 in which an article was published distantly north from her home in South Africa about the politics of time in the Guardian (UK).
Among the many delights detailed:

[T]hough GMT was declared the universal time measurement in 1884, the French, until 1978, continued in law to call GMT “Paris Mean Time retarded by nine minutes and twenty one seconds”.

Much there about the colonializing use of time as the fabled 2000 was approaching as the article was being published.