[1066AD]

Don’t know for sure but it goes back decades if not centuries. Europeans often do it slightly differently to reduce confusion - they use roman numerals for the month so for August 7 1961 you might see 7/viii/1961 but they still put the month in the middle, not first.

[Right Wing Assault]

The 'dd/mm/yyyy' format does not appear to be a universal style in England yet.

From this website in a thread called "American vs British style of writing dates":

http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t1952-45.htm

David Thu Jan 11, 2007 9:32 pm GMT

What a stupid discussion:

Fact is:

Both day-month-year and month-day-year are used in Britain. And the month-day-year version is even preferred by British newspapers:

Let's see:

The Times: February 17, 2005

Guardian: Feburary 17, 2005

Economist: February 17th 2005

And there are also influential American publications (especially academic publications) that use day-month-year, for example:

Science Magazine: 17 February 2005

Physical Review Letters: 17 February 2005

****

and from Saturday's Times of London, check out the date, September 5, 2009:

.

[Genoa]

Roman numerals??