Remember, You Get An 'Extra' Hour Of Sleep Tonight; But Why Do We Change Our Clocks?

It’s that time. The weekend many eagerly await because it means an extra hour of sleep.

Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 a.m., which means we ”regain” the hour we lost in March when we moved the clocks in a decades-long tradition that allows most of us to capture the maximum amount of sunlight during our waking hours.

It is also the day that firefighters around the country urge people to change the batteries in their smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors. According to the National Fire Protection Association, 23 percent of all home fire deaths occurred in residences where the smoke alarm failed to sound. Of those, 71 percent were the result of a missing or dead battery.

In 2013, 2,785 civilians died in residential fires; 2,430 died in one- and two- family homes, according to the NFPA.

So be sure to change those batteries.

Now, why do we change our clocks in the first place?

According to the website Timeanddate.com, daylight saving time was first put into practice during World War I by several countries -- including the United States -- were trying to minimize the use of artificial light to conserve energy because of the war effort.

Most countries ceased using it after World War I, but resumed it during World War II, and never went away from it. It is not practiced uniformly, even in the United States; Arizona, Hawaii and the U.S. territories -- and the territories of Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa stay on “standard time” all year long, according to InfoPlease. That website also notes that more than 1 billion people in 70 countries observe daylight saving time in some form.

Timeanddate.com says the idea for maximizing the use of daylight wasn’t a modern-era suggestion only; Benjamin Franklin first suggested the idea back in 1784, in the essay “An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light.” “He proposed the idea, although a little jokingly, to economize the use of candles by getting people out of bed earlier in the morning, making use of the natural morning light instead,” the site says.

Of course, going back to standard time means it will be getting dark earlier, but keep in mind the days get shorter only until Dec. 21; the first day of winter, the winter solstice, also is the shortest day of the year. After that, the days begin to lengthen again.