Q: but then it always ends up being month/day/year (presumably because someone shortened that second one to month/day and bunged year onto the end later)
A: month-day seems like a good way to present month and day information. the problem is, of course, if you specify the year after, then the information becomes out of order. so in europe and many other places (possibly everywhere except usa) it goes day-month-year, so the information goes in a consistent order. of course it still won't sort perfectly, because the base 10 numbering system puts the smaller bits on the right. so for day-month-year to sort perfectly in a computer, we'd have to spell our numbers backwards