1.7.9 : date command fails for year 1900

[cygwin]

Hi All,

I'm seeing a problem with my setup where the date command fails in an 
odd way:

this is what it does:
$ date -d '1 January  1900'
date: invalid date `1 January  1900'

same thing on a linux box:
$ date -d '1 January  1900'
Mon Jan  1 00:00:00 PMT 1900

any dates after 1901 seem to work OK:
$ date -d '1 January  1902'
Wed Jan  1 00:00:00 PMT 1902

but nothing works before then:


$ date -d 'today - 150 years'
date: invalid date `today - 150 years'

$ date -d 'today - 100 years'
Sun Jan 21 01:33:27 WET 1912

this is the info for the date command:

$ date --version
date (GNU coreutils) 8.14
Packaged by Cygwin (8.14-1)
Copyright (C) 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later 
<http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by David MacKenzie.

Where should I start debugging?

Thanks in advance,
Dave


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