Re: Back-dating commits--way back--for constitution.git

> I'd figured to play with Git in an unusual way: to create a repository
> for the U.S. Constitution where amendments are presented as patches.
> E.g., instead of the First Amendment being placed at the end (as is
> usual) I'm putting it in Article 1, Section 9 (Limitations of Congress).
>  Proposed amendments get branches, which get merged in later.
> 
> But I'm trying to get the dates right, and I'm missing something.  For
> example, I made the initial commit with the line
> 
> 	$ git commit --author="The Philadelphia Convention <>" \
> 	 --date="Mon, 17 Sep 1787 12:00:00 EST"
> 
> but that's not actually setting the commit date to 1787.
> 
> Am I doing something wrong, or is Git (quite reasonably) unable to
> accept commit dates that far in the past?