JavaScript Dates, Trains, Passover, and Henry VIII

The IANA timezone database[0] contains some real gems in the comments. A lot of research has gone into making it as accurate as possible.

For instance, at the top of the UK entries in the "europe" file, you get this:

    # From Peter Ilieve (1994-07-06):
    #
    # On 17 Jan 1994 the Independent, a UK quality newspaper, had a piece about
    # historical vistas along the Thames in west London. There was a photo
    # and a sketch map showing some of the sightlines involved. One paragraph
    # of the text said:
    #
    # 'An old stone obelisk marking a forgotten terrestrial meridian stands
    # beside the river at Kew. In the 18th century, before time and longitude
    # was standardised by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, scholars observed
    # this stone and the movement of stars from Kew Observatory nearby. They
    # made their calculations and set the time for the Horse Guards and Parliament,
    # but now the stone is obscured by scrubwood and can only be seen by walking
    # along the towpath within a few yards of it.'
    #
    # I have a one inch to one mile map of London and my estimate of the stone's
    # position is 51 degrees 28' 30" N, 0 degrees 18' 45" W. The longitude should
    # be within about +-2". The Ordnance Survey grid reference is TQ172761.
    #
    # [This yields GMTOFF = -0:01:15 for London LMT in the 18th century.]

Or in the "northamerica" file:

    # From Arthur David Olson (2011-02-09):
    # I just spoke by phone with a staff member at the Metlakatla Indian
    # Community office (using contact information available at
    # http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/dca/commdb/CIS.cfm?Comm_Boro_name=Metlakatla
    # It's shortly after 1:00 here on the east coast of the United States;
    # the staffer said it was shortly after 10:00 there. When I asked whether
    # that meant they were on Pacific time, they said no - they were on their
    # own time. I asked about daylight saving; they said it wasn't used. I
    # did not inquire about practices in the past.

And for furthere errata, I will mention the artist William Kentridge, whose video installation "The Refusal of Time"[1] was one of the cooler pieces I've seen in the last few years.

[0]: http://www.iana.org/time-zones

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaPnBorIMmc (YouTube doesn't really do it justice, but if you like art and you ever get the chance to see it, I highly recommend taking the time)

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It wasn't prepared for HackerNews visiblity :P

I don't know if this is only true of JavaScript, but its parser at least accepts all months as having 31 days and then normalises them to the following month, on overflow:

    > new Date('2015-02-31')
    Mon Mar 02 2015 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (GMT)
    > new Date('2015-02-32')
    Invalid Date

I'm not sure if I entirely approve of this behaviour...

Any idea what program he's using to generate this output? Almost looks like a terminal of some sort.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5787/22411552050_8e35a9308e_c....