title: Javascript Date.Parse blows up on Russian Dates
body: <p>We have a web application that gets its data from a certain database. The product writing to that database has been localized to RUSSIAN, thus its data, in particular the dates had been localized too.</p>
  
  <p>We encountered a problem where our DATES would not show on our application. We traced the problem to an invalid Date.parse() javascript call.</p>
  
  <p>Example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;html&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
  
  &lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
  var value = Date.parse("01/31/2009 08:00:00 AM");
  document.write(value);
  &lt;/script&gt;
  
  &lt;/body&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Would return 1260576000000.</p>
  
  <p>However,</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;html&gt;
  &lt;body&gt;
  
  &lt;script type="text/javascript"&gt;
  var value = Date.parse("31.01.2009 08:00:00 AM");
  document.write(value);
  &lt;/script&gt;
  
  &lt;/body&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Would return NaN.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a way to parse localized dates in Javascript?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>