[jcranmer]

It's worth noting that much of the original java.util.Date class was based on the same misfeatures as POSIX C:

1. Leap seconds? Those don't exist, right? 2. Years date from 1900. 3. January is Month 0 (ignoring the fact that there is already a widespread convention of numbering January 1).

Of course, the "fix" of Calendar didn't attempt to fix any of the POSIX-did-it-first problems but instead mostly limited itself to supporting other locales by allowing non-Gregorian calendars.