HTML_QuickForm_Date display before 1969

Hi, Weird (to me) behaviour. I'm a little stuck on it. I have a date dropdown menu that displays the correct date *unless* the date falls before unix epoch begins (12-31-1969). No matter what the date is, if the date falls before 12-31-69, my date dropdown menu displays 31-Dec-1969 . If the date is more recent than 1969, the dropdowns display the date correctly. No matter what the date is, the form submits it correctly to the database -- it is an error only in displaying dates pre-1969 -- ie, you can pull the dropdowns down to whatever date you wish, and it will do the inserts correctly, as well as retrieve the data correctly when you echo it to the page. It's like the date is drawn before the menu knows it can display earlier dates. I tried setting this in my php page as well as in postGenerateForm, but it was the same either way. I feel I must be missing something obvious, but I am still missing it. Does anyone have a suggestion that would stop this? Code snippet: function postGenerateForm(&$form){ // removed so I could create a new element with minYear and maxYear $form->removeElement('DOB'); $options = array('minYear'=>1924, 'maxYear'=>1990, 'addEmptyOption'=>true, 'format'=>'dMY'); $QF_date = new HTML_QuickForm_date('DOB', 'Date of Birth',$options); $QF_date->setValue($this->DOB); // the date from the db, formatted 1969-02-14 $form->addElement($QF_date); } Thanks -- Sarah