[joezydeco]

It says so right in the article.

Choosing Greenwich as 0-longitude meant that the International Date Line would be located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, avoiding a situation where it could be two dates in the same country simultaneously.

[Aloha]

Have you looked at the map for the IDL?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Internati...

That not jiggered by politics at all.

[joezydeco]

I thought we were talking about the "arbitrary" choice of Longitude 0. What's the political (and not economic) basis for the later IDL modifications?

[Aloha]

That fails to make the first choice any less arbitrary - the choice was made to line up with existing sea charts - which of course used the Greenwich as 0 - but Greenwich as 0 was an arbitrary choice in the first place - not all arbitrary choices are bad ones, that was the crux of my argument in the first place.