Bit of a misnomer, isn't it?

Whilst today is the longest day, it is nether the earliest sunrise nor latest sunset - those two events are about a week either side of today.

If you plot the times on a graph (for summer and winter), you'll see two curves, but the peak and trough of those currves do not coincide, but the longest/shortest/longest distance between them happens today and Dec 21.

If you can't visualise what I'm saying, take two 2p pieces to represent the curves;
Start with them touchingso you have a figure 8;
then move one slightly to the leftt and you'll see that the shortest distance between them is not at the top and bottom of the coin.

Boring pedentic lesson over.

Bet you never knew (or wanted to know) that.