Ah yes, of course you are correct. My, um, “long term memory” isn’t that good. 
I worked for NEC for a few years. The paperwork arriving from Japan had dates such as 21-12-32. They used it to mean the 21st day of the 12th month of the 32nd year of the current emperor’s reign. Confusing, no?
I agree with funneefarmer as to it matching the verbal date, but for the sake of efficiency? We Americans are so inefficient that we move the fork from one hand to the other between bites. 
I don’t care - I do most of my programming in SAS and the date format doesn’t matter.
But…why is that the date and time that man (read Neil Armstrong) walked on the moon is Florida time.
I find this interesting because an Australian politician talked about how shocked he and his schoolmates were when Kennedy was assassinated.
In Australia JFK was shot on a Saturday - I was out playing sport, broke down and cried, and ran home to mummy.
But if events occur in space what local time do we observe?
I think the sooner ISO 8601 comes in the better!
It’d still be great to find out why America changed their system… was it a pre-independence event? Or something that came about with the silicon advance?
It’s ironic that the USA’s most famous holiday gets called “The fourth of July” still! Must be a throwback to good old formal Britishness!
I usually put the day first: (D)D (M)M YY. For example, 13 5 01. Unless the day is less than or equal to 12, in which case I use (D)D MON YY – 12 Jun 01. In the first case, anyone can see that the first number can’t be a month because it it greater than 12. In the second, the month is spelled out.
We do?
::watches self eat::
Nope. Fork in left hand. Knife, when appropriate, operated with the right. Nothing changes hands.
Hm, I distinctly remember Cecil answering a similar question regarding time at the North Pole, where all time zones converge, but can’t find it in the archives - instead, try this from Discover.com (you’ll have to scroll down a bit). From the link:
I’d imagine it works the same way in space, so if the moonwalks were reported in Florida time, that’s probably to keep it consistent with the launch operation at Kennedy Space Center, “Houston, the Eagle has landed” notwithstanding.
Jimuth - no answer for your OP yet, but here’s an interesting tidbit from Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar by Duncan Steel: “[U.S.] government forms…stipulate that the date format be day/month/year,” which flies against both conventional American usage and ISO-8601 specifications.
There’s an assumption here–who says that DD/MM was first? For all that I know, the MM/DD system was first, and the Britons (and practically everybody else) changed. Do we have any evidence other than “Well, everybody just knows!”?
I’m not claiming that MM/DD was first, but I haven’t seen any evidence either way.
What time do astronauts use in space? Also relevant is the followup thread. The consensus seems to be that Mission Elapsed time, Universal Time, and Houston time are all used, but not Florida. Do you have a cite, don’t ask?
Ianuarius undetriginta dierum
January 29, with the number coming second. So it seems that month day came first.
dierum is gen plur … don’t think there’s a literal translation of this that works in English. And their may be other examples that contradict this. I found it by searching google for ianuarius. And most of the hits were not Latin texts. Anyway here’s where I got it.
Bump.
Doesn’t seem like this was ever answered – aside from a long list of various formats various people in various countries use, I can’t find any information on the historic origins/reasons of why Americans and Brits write the date differently.
Anyone?
It’s just been discussed. I think the idea was that Americans have traditionally said “July the Fourth” (well, that’s probably not the best example :)), whereas Brits say “The Fourth of July”.
I’m not sure how Spanish, French, Germans etc. say it, but that would be the clincher (as they write it the same as the UK and the rest of the civilised world - reminds me of the whole US and metric debate :)).
muttrox, you must have missed this one.
I genuinely think that a few centuries back, when spelling was still in the process of distinguishing "s"s from "f"s, no one really cared whether the month or year came first, and two different habits ended up becoming popular. Prior to computers or even mechanical filing systems, who would care? There was no logical advantage to either, and the dust settled purely on style.
Or, that’s my guess, anyway.
The original OP asked, “Who made the change, and when?..I’ve searched all over the 'net and asked a fair few Americans, but no answer yet on the historical reasons for putting the month first…”
I read all the replies from both threads, no specific answers. A lot of “that’s my guess”, “this is how it should be” or “it just happened”. Surely, there is some root point in time, some root historical event, where the divergence happened? Even tracing it back to a given century or decade would get us somewhere.
Right, I’m bored of looking.
My theory (no doubt half-baked) was the the European convention came from Latin, but I can’t seem to find any confirmation of this.
I suppose that it’s possible that both formats were in use in the US & UK way back when, and we just ended up settling on different ones (although, this doesn’t explain why the rest of Europe would settle for dd/mm/yy).
The American way of saying the date (I’m trying not to say “is lazier”) involves fewer words/is quicker to say, so I thought it represented a break with the “proper” way of saying it.
Anyway, as Doug Bowe said in the other thread, the US usage can be traced back to at least July 4, 1776.
Just for the record, the US Military writes dates as: 26 Mar 02, or 26 March 2002, or 26 March 02. So, we do it D/M/Y, even though the rest of the country does M/D/Y.
Jman