Dates before January 1st, 1970

Question

The getTime() fetches the time in millis for a certain Date. Can this be used reliably for dates say in the 18th century. We use the millis and store it in a string variable

Answer 1

Returns the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT represented by this Date object

Better to go for Calendar OR Jodatime