

12.04.1961 - First human in outer space. - ilkhd2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gagarin

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cubicle67
What's sad is that I've become so accustomed to seeing American date formats
everywhere, then when one is in the correct order (like this one), I still
read it wrong.

Some time ago I started using only two formats, 1961-04-12 or 12-APR-1961, to
help me avoid this ambiguity.

~~~
lucumo
I always find myself feeling annoyed with whoever uses ##-## as a date format,
no matter if it's normal or American style. Of course, I get (slightly)
annoyed by forms that ask you to enter dates in dd-mm-yyyy format.

Using formats like dd-mm and mm-dd is something no one who cares even the
slightest about his/her international public should do. Even if it's
unambiguous (day 13 or up), it still requires someone to compare the numbers
and reparse the date.

The ISO datestyle is good for technical people who really should know about
these things. It's also very nice because it sorts lexically, which is very
nice in computer programs.

For contracts and other places where somebody not accustomed to the ISO date
format, writing the month in full or shortening it in letters (like you do),
is probably much nicer. Of course, that leaves the added problem of
translation, but it's a little better for an international public even if just
in English, since there are English-speaking countries that use one and that
use the other. Not to mention the whole "English is not my native tongue but I
speak it quite well"-crowd.

~~~
tmadsen
Thank you for talking about an ISO standard! It changed my mind about writing
dates as dd-mm-yyyy. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601>

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kqr2
There are world-wide parties to celebrate this:

<http://yurisnight.net/>

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ilkhd2
Very sad, Google did not change the logo, like they do for even less honorable
dates.

~~~
bd
Here you are:

<http://www.google.co.uk/logos/yuri_gagarin.gif>

And they also did Sputnik:

<http://www.google.com/logos/google_sputnik.gif>

