It was still dark when most Americans set off for work and school the morning of Jan. 7, 1974. Commuters grumbled about having to descend to the subways and report to work without glimpsing the sun. Some kids carried flashlights on their way to school.
One woman was so overwhelmed, she simply went back to bed.
“It’s the end,” Terry Minz, of Long Island, N.Y., told the New York Times. “I can’t cope anymore. The comet, the energy crisis, now darkness. I’m just staying in bed.”
So it went the last time the United States took a run at year-round daylight saving time. The experiment, which meant a sunrise of 8:30 a.m. or later for large swaths of the nation, proved short-lived. Amid a swell of public displeasure and a series of early-morning traffic fatalities, Congress voted to undo the change 10 months in.
Go incognito.
