Daylight Savings Ends Tonight: Get Some Extra Sleep

If you like sleep, this might be your favorite night of the year.

At 2 a.m. Sunday, daylight-saving time officially ends in most parts of the United States.

That means you should turn your clocks back an hour when you go to bed Saturday night. That's right, you get an extra hour of sleep.

Clocks were turned ahead an hour in March to begin daylight-saving time. We will be on so-called standard time as of 2 a.m. Sunday.

That's the pattern in the Northern Hemisphere. It's the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere. They begin daylight-saving time at this time of year.

The purpose of daylight-saving time is to increase the number of sunlight hours in the evening during the summer.

Supporters say this makes it safer for children to play outside during the summer. They also say it reduces energy use because people use lights and other electrical devices less.

Fire prevention officials also urge people to change the batteries in their smoke alarms whenever they turn their clocks forward or backward.

According to the website timeanddate.com, daylight-saving time was first proposed by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, but it wasn't implemented until 1916 when several European countries adopted it during World War I.

Daylight-saving time was first introduced in the United States by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 during World War II. It caused confusion from 1945 to 1966 for trains, buses and the broadcasting industry because states were free to establish their own standards.

Congress ended the confusion by passing the Uniform Time Act of 1966, although there are still some pockets of the country where time standards are different.