December 31 1969 – All You Need To Know About 12/31/1969 In 30 Secs.

Have you ever experienced the date on your digital device suddenly change to December 31 1969? On the other hand, if you’re a developer – let’s say web developer, have you faced an issue whereby a date data field that’s supposed to contain the current date suddenly starts showing 12/31/1969 instead of the current date it’s supposed to?

So what’s this all about? Let’s take a quick look:

12/31/1969 – What Is It All About?

To understand the date 12/31/1969, we have to first of all look at Unix. Unix is an operating. A really big and important one that impacts all of our lives. In fact, most of the backbone of global technological infrastructures (mobile devices, computer servers, workstations, etc) run on Unix in one form or the other.

Unix’s initial release date was on November 3, 1971. It so happens that the developers of Unix chose January 1, 1970 GMT as the epoch date – which basically signals when time began for Unix. In other words, this date is the start of time for Unix-verse. For example, if you reset the timestamp on a Unix system to 0, the time will show January 1, 1970.

What Happened On December 31 1969

Nothing specific happened. When your digital device or software/web application is showing you December 31, 1969, this suggests that most likely there’s a bug someone and the Unix epoch date is being displayed.

But wait you ask, isn’t the epoch date supported to be January 1, 1970? Yes, you’re correct. But’s January 1, 1970 – GMT. And most like you live in the Western Hemisphere and as such when it’s midnight Greenwich, England – it’s still December 31 in the Western Hemisphere hence why you get December 31 1969 instead of January 1, 1970 displayed.

How To Fix December 31 1969 Glitch

Let’s take a quick look at how to fix December 31 1969 glitch. The good news is that it’s pretty simple and straight forward. All you have to do is adjust the date and time to the prevent date and time – and that’s it!

Check out the video below to learn more from the creators of Unix.