zero time, zero longitude

you never know what you will learn.

I have often wondered why UTM, and the 0 longitude were at Greenwich England.  I would have assumed Paris would be he center of time and space, considering they hold the official metric baseline objects (plus its the French)

Now I may have an answer, while maybe not correct, it does make sense to me.  All of this from watching History International's Engineering an Empire.

1. There is a great fire at Windsor Castle
2. The British rebuild the castle complex, and add a large clock.
3. The large clock, with its bell, Big Bend, have the requirement of only gaining or losing one second every twenty-four hour day.
4. To verify the accuracy, the time had to be telegraphed to the Greenwich observatory, which I would assume would validate the time, using the old sun over head trick.  Which after all is the definition of a  solar day.

Now add the following information

6. At this period of history, the Sun never set on the British Empire.  There were British colonies around the globe.
7. To control the empire, the British ran telegraph lines to the various parts of the world.
8. Within a couple of minutes, the clocks in all colonies could be synced to Big Bend, via telegraph.
9. When you compare your clock to someone else's, either could be correct, but if you can claim your clock is synced with the rest of the world, well your clock has a bit more "truth" to it.
10. The different clock problem is encountered often at this time in history by the need to sync time between places, just to keep the trains on time.  If you can provide a globally synced time, your trains can run on a schedule that works over great distances, including across international borders.

So the British end up setting the worlds' clocks.  Since time is really just a distance, when it comes to slicing the world into 360 degrees of longitude, why not put the zero mark where time is zero.

My question has an answer.  I live near -90 degrees of longitude, due to a fire in a place I have never been too.