I've found the module
Date::Calc to be usefull in such situations.
Check out CPAN for more info on it.
At a first glance, it looks as though you might want one of two functions that are pre-built into the mod. I'd recommend:
use Date::Calc qw( Decode_Date_EU Decode_Date_US );
For a good portion of the dates, although there may be more that would be better suited for you to use.
---hA||ta----
print map{$_.' '}grep{/\w+/}@{[reverse(qw{Perl Code})]} or die while ( 'trying' );