Python 2.5 (r25:51918, Sep 19 2006, 08:49:13) 
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5341)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import datetime
>>> datetime.date(1876, 2, 3).strftime('%Y-%m-%d')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: year=1876 is before 1900; the datetime strftime() methods require year >= 1900


Apparently this is due to platform-specific weirdnesses in implementations of strftime.  It is still very annoying however.  Perhaps a good implementation of strftime could be found and incorporated into Python itself?