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In computers, dates are commonly represented as integer offsets from some fixed date. Nowadays, that "epoch" date is usually January 1, 1970. In Cobol, it was 1875. (Both are semi-arbitrary choices, made for historical reasons.)

A problem is that there's no way to represent "unknown." But the field has to contain *something*. So Cobol programmers used the epoch, knowing that everyone would know to interpret 1875 as "unknown". (1/6)