There are differences in the climates of the Northern and Southern hemispheres because of the Earth's seasonal tilt toward and away from the sun. ... The prime meridian, or 0 degrees longitude, and the International Date Line, 180 degrees longitude, divide the Earth into Eastern and Western hemispheres.
There's no place on Earth where East and West, cardinal directions, don't meet. ... Britain: The Greenwich Meridian, which runs through an observatory in London's environs, is technically where East meets West. It was settled upon as the "prime meridian" at an international conference in Washington in 1884.
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that east is direction where the sun rises: east comes from Middle English est, from Old English ēast, which itself comes from the Proto-Germanic *aus-to- or *austra- "east, toward the sunrise", from Proto-Indo-European *aus- "to shine," or "dawn".