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In May 1909 The Netherlands created their own time zone. We named it the Amsterdamse Tijd, and was... 19 minutes, 32 seconds and 13 milliseconds later than GMT/London Time. This was the exact time of the tower of the Westerkerk in Amsterdam, a church that later became famous in the dairy of Anne Frank.
The Amsterdam Time proved not to be very practical, so in 1937 it was improved, and the time in The Netherlands became 20 minutes later than GMT/London Time, also known also as Gorinchemse Tijd or Loenense Tijd, because both towns had a church tower almost exactly on that time longitude. This didn't survive very long. After the invasion of the Germans in May 1940 they abolished the Dutch time zone on 16 May 1940. It never returned.
@smveerman@zug.network we should honestly be London time
@smveerman@zug.network but we want to trade with the Germans so we are st. Petersburg time in summer 
@syn It is even worse in Spain, but not having to change clocks when crossing the nowadays almost invisible border is quite practical. The three Benelux-countries already agreed they will always stay in the same time zone, and Belgium does prefer to be in the same time zone as Paris, so only when the French decide to move, we probably will do too.
@smveerman@zug.network yeah, Benelux, France, Spain, maybe Switzerland and/or Denmark joining GMT would make a lot of sense, get rid of DST in one go while we're messing with timezones anyways
@smveerman I didn't know this, interesting! Though, I would read this text as 19 minutes, 32 seconds and 130 milliseconds (0.13s)