I'm Australian, here we write the date day/month/year (logical) why do Americans do it month/day/year.?
597637
Because your seasons are backwards and ours are just right.  And your toilet flushes in the reverse (wrong) direction.  How can you go on living?
230956
It's a reference to weather.  Crappy weather at the beginning of the month, mild weather at the end of the month.
994954
Theres an extra day on the last week. Think how your birthday moves forward a day each year. Ther are actually 365 1/4 days in a year. The leap year every 4 years means this doesnt ever go out of synch too far
196749
no, it's because of the rotation of the earth.  Clocks in the southern hemisphere go around the other direction, like your toilet ;-).\n\nIt's because the shadow on a sun dial in England goes around that direction.
902159
ok, \n\n1,432,567  -\n              2  -  (days left for nov this year)\n            31  -  (days in dec)\n--------------\n1,432,534  /\n          365     (days in a regular year)\n---------------\n  3,924. 7506   years. ignore the decimals for now, but remeber \n                         them for later.\n\nso \n\n3,924 / \n       4    Years between leap years\n--------\n   981    exrta years for the leap years. which is one day extra. so \n             this number is years, because we are working in years\n             for now (the decimals we are saving are the days)\n\nso\n\n3,924 +\n   981\n---------\n4,905     this is our total numer of years to add from the\n              begining of 2007 (our first sum minused the days left\n              in this year.\n\nso \n\n2007  +\n4905\n-------\n6912  This is the year.\n\nfor the days:\n\nso the decimals from before were .7506. we need to convert this from a point of a year to days.\n\n0.75 is 3 quarters, 3 quarters of a year is September. the remander decimals is 06. for this to become a teen number it has to reach 10. so we need to divide the number of days in sep which is 30 by 9 and multiply by 6 for the date. it will say 19.9* (we round numbers up from .5 so its the 20th\n\nmy predicted date is\n\n20th Sep 6912.\n\n(or so I think) my brain hurts! lol
225407
TWO WAYS TO REMEMBER HOW MANY DAYS IN A MONTH\n\nA RHYME:\n30 days has September, APRIL, June and November.\nAll the rest have 31 except February alone which has 28 or 29 on a leap year.\n\nA STRANGE COINCIDENCE\nClench your fists and put your knuckles together side my side. The first knuckle on the left of your left hand is January, then moving to the right there is a dip, this is February, then there is the next knuckle, March, etc. until you get to December on the middle of your right hand. All the knuckles are 31 days and all the dips are 30 (except February, which is an exception, as above)
1064552
LONG ONE:\nSplitting the year up into 365 days was easy - everybody knew what a day was, and everybody knew what a year was, so they just counted up how many days there were in a year. This happened all over the world, many times, independently in different cultures. When one group of invaders came along to politely ask another group if they would mind, say, changing their religion, the agressors would say "You've got a day to think about it before we smash you up". It's unlikely these two nations would speak the same language, so this would take a lot of hand waving and pointing at the sun and moon to get across, but across it would nevertheless be gotten. There was no need to go into deep astronomical calculations, because the concept of a day was universal - even newly introduced mortal enemies who didn't have a word or belief in common, would at least have a measurement in common.\n\nGood story below\n\nBryan crooked his right thumb to touch the base of his right index finger (please follow along and do it, too), and said, in much the same way as a Sumerian might have, 4,000 years ago... "One."\n\nHe then moved up a notch - see that? Each of your fingers has three distinct segments. I never really noticed that! - and, touching now the middle segment of his right index finger with his right thumb, he said... "Two." \n\nI think you may sense where this is leading. By the time your right thumb has counted each of the three segments of his neighboring four fingers, you're up to 12. \n\nLong before people were reading with their lips, one imagines, they were counting with their fingers. \n\nSo a day was divided into 12 segments, called hours; and, too, the night. \n\nWhat a lovely story. It was all the ancient Sumerians' fault! The ancient Babylonians inherited this quaint practice, and presumably added their own 60-fetish to divide the hours into 60 minutes, and the minutes into 60 seconds. The Babylonian fascination with the number 60 is interesting in itself - so interesting, in fact, that it suggests the Babylonians were the ones who split up the day, using geometric series:
596970
MONTH-something idk\nDATE-something idk
64606
It probably just made more sense to describe the amount and then the currency.  I see some written descriptions outside the US use the currency symbol afterward, like 637$.  Maybe we should all start doing it...:-)
403513
Odd, no one's mentioned this (maybe they all just assumed it was obvious?)\n\n"fortnight" is derived from "fourteen-night(s)"which should remind you of how long it is  [just say that fast, emphasizing the "Four"!] \n\n(As for being "old-fashioned" -- it may not be an everyday word, but it is hardly obsolete in America either!)\n\nUsage note (if you care): just as we can use 'week' when referring to a period of approximately that length, 'fortnight' does not always need to refer to precisely fourteen days (or nights!)\n\nFinal trivia notes: some languages count their days a bit differently.  Thus, in German, if someone is referring to something two weeks (14 days) away they will say (translated literally), "today in 15 days". (Similarly, for a week from today they could say "today in 8 days") That is, they are INCLUDING both today and the ending day in the count.
901264
There was a reason to worry.    Here's why.\n\nMost computer programs were coded with 2 digits for the year, not 4.   When date logic or math was done with 2 dates, the result would've been incorrect if there was one date after 2000 and one date before 2000.    \n\nThe best example is an age calculation - what would've been the age of someone on 01/01/00 that was born on 01/01/99?\n\nMost people would say 1 year old, but look at it again.   What do you get if you subract 99 from 00?     That's a negative number.\nThe other thing is that the person could've been born in 1899 and actually be 101 years old.   You can't tell by the date alone, which century it comes from.   \n\nAnother thing to worry about was leap year.    1900 was not a leap year, but 2000 was.    \n\nSome computer programs are very dependent on the date to determine what happens in the program.   Using the same dates, which is greater 01/01/99 or 01/01/00...   99 is greater than 00, but it should be the other way around - 2000 is greater than 1999.\n\nBesides the more commonly known version of the date of month/day/year (mm/dd/yy), there is a version that's called a julian date which is year and day of year (yyddd).   All of this logic had to be changed and tested too to make sure it worked the way it was supposed to. \n\nThe solution to the problem was to include the other 2 digits of the year in all date logic.    It seems simple, but there's dates for everything.  Just look at any bill.  You have birth dates, payment due dates, billing dates, transaction dates, start dates, end dates, delivery dates, policy dates, fiscal dates, tax related dates, etc.    The logic for each one had to be analyzed, changed and tested in all different combinations of business scenarios.\n\nThere would've been problems if nothing was done about it, but I don't know what they may have been.   I'm not sure if we'd have the level of catastrophe they were talking about though.
514615
Date converter here:\n\nhttp://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/JulianDate.html\n\nJulian dates (abbreviated JD) are simply a continuous count of days and fractions since noon Universal Time on January 1, 4713 BCE (on the Julian calendar). Almost 2.5 million days have transpired since this date. Julian dates are widely used as time variables within astronomical software. Typically, a 64-bit floating point (double precision) variable can represent an epoch expressed as a Julian date to about 1 millisecond precision. Note that the time scale that is the basis for Julian dates is Universal Time, and that 0h UT corresponds to a Julian date fraction of 0.5. \nIt is assumed that 7-day weeks have formed an uninterrupted sequence since ancient times. Thus, the day of the week can be obtained from the remainder of the division of the Julian date by 7. \n\nCalendar dates — year, month, and day — are more problematic. Various calendar systems have been in use at different times and places around the world. This application deals with only two: the Gregorian calendar, now used universally for civil purposes, and the Julian calendar, its predecessor in the western world. As used here, the two calendars have identical month names and number of days in each month, and differ only in the rule for leap years. The Julian calendar has a leap year every fourth year, while the Gregorian calendar has a leap year every fourth year except century years not exactly divisible by 400. \n\nThis application assumes that the changeover from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar occurred in October of 1582, according to the scheme instituted by Pope Gregory XIII. Specifically, for dates on or before 4 October 1582, the Julian calendar is used; for dates on or after 15 October 1582, the Gregorian calendar is used. Thus, there is a ten-day gap in calendar dates, but no discontinuity in Julian dates or days of the week: 4 October 1582 (Julian) is a Thursday, which begins at JD 2299159.5; and 15 October 1582 (Gregorian) is a Friday, which begins at JD 2299160.5. The omission of ten days of calendar dates was necessitated by the astronomical error built up by the Julian calendar over its many centuries of use, due to its too-frequent leap years. \n\nThe changeover to the Gregorian calendar system occurred as described above only in Roman Catholic countries, however. Adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the rest of the world progressed slowly. For example, for England and its colonies, the change did not occur until September 1752. (The Unix cal command for systems manufactured in the U.S. reflects the 1752 changeover.)
840236
If have the same problem importanting my data.\nIn fact there are two problems, one is the separation between data columns, the other is the fact that in American notation for dates and numbers is different from the European one.\n\nIf you open a csv file  OpenOffice shows you a Text Import window.\nFirst you change the Separator options. In my case the Comma field is set, so I change it to semi-colon ; as my data are separated like that, but it might be that space or tab is the correct choice for your data.\n\nNow you have your data in correct columns.\n\nGo to the Fields lower on the pages. Each column is labelled Standard. Right clicking on the word Standard gives you various other options including several ones for the date, as well as the difference between American and European number format.\n\nIf you don't get OpenOffice to understand you, there is no other choice than to change the input file by hand or macro first.\n\nPS If a date does not contain the year, OpenOffice *always* assumes it is the present year. Therefore you have to change the date columns either by including the year explicitly, or in OpenOffice after import.\n\nPS2 I have everything automated with macros. After all it is an exercise one has to repeat often.
378736
Keep in mind, things like seasons, months, minutes, etc, are human contructs- we can define them anyway we like.  Earth doesnt really neatly divide the year into 4 parts, humans do-
29453
This all dates back to the Ancient Babylonians who liked to count in base 60. Ratios of 6, 12, 60, and 360 were seen by them as being 'round' numbers in the same way that we use base 10 and see 5, 10, 100 etc as useful numbers to divide things up into. \n\nSee: http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/ HistTopics/Babylonian_and_Egyptian.html \n\nThe Babylonians divided the sky into the 12 signs of the Zodiac, and a circle into 360 degrees. They divided the day and night each into 12 hours (although in many time systems the lengths of these varied between summer and winter! Babylon was rather nearer the equator than Liverpool, so they didn't get too confused with this). The hour was split into 60 minutes and a minute into 60 seconds. \n\nAll these numbers have survived for 4000 years, despite the fact that we have changed our numbering system to base 10! In England, when I was young, we still measured with feet, each divided into 12 inches. The Americans still do! [By the way, do you know where the mile comes from? It's Roman, not Babylonian!] \n\nThe year is nearly 360 days long and the Babylonians split it into 12 months. Other civilizations based their calendar on the moon and had 13 months. We still have problems with this today because Easter is based on the lunar calendar and migrates around the Julian calendar in a complex way. Chinese new year is still based on the Lunar calendar
862183
Some people say that since there is a Central, South, and North America, people in the US aren't the only Americans. It is annoying because we have been called Americans forever, and I don't know why this word is popping up now.
20424
It partially depends on the language too. In English its easier to say "December 15th" rather than "15th OF December", so you write "12/15/2005". For instance in russian, you can only say "15 december", so it makes more sense to write it "15/12/2005".