[esnard]

sha1("date\n") == "a975c295ddeab5b1a5323df92f61c4cc9fc88207"

[Bromskloss]

Haha, this is even more baffling! How did you know that?

PS: Might it have come from a botched attempt to hash the current date?

[amelius]

Yes, it's true. I think I can explain it as follows. I wanted to type:

    date | sha1sum

Then another part of my brain decided to type:

    echo "blah blah gibberish" | sha1sum

But then I ended up typing:

    echo date | sha1sum

I suspect you could reverse engineer that with standard password cracking techniques.