"The sun never sets on the British Empire"

  

As we know, the British Empire is known as the largest and powerful empire of all times. It has influence over almost a quarter of the world. The territories dominated for Britain includes India, Australia, Canada, Palestine, South Africa and New Zealand to name some of them. So, its power was huge. At the peak of the empire, the phrase "The sun never sets on British Empire" was often used to refer to it.

But, what does this actually mean?

As I said before, British Empire was so big and at the peak of its power, it had at least one territory occuped on each continent of the world. So, that's why doesn't matter the time of the day: As the earth rotated the Sun continually shone on British territory. 

As the image show us, the sun is always shining in at least one of the British territories. 

Just like an interesting fact: The phrase became popular in the 19th century (especially during the Victorian era) to apply it to the British Empire a time when British world maps showed the empire in red or pink to  highlight  the British imperial power spanning the world.