title: python date.min does not convert back. Why?
body: <p>Consider this code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>datestring = date.min.strftime("%d-%m-%Y")
  date = datetime.strptime(datestring,"%d-%m-%Y")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This raises the following error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Traceback (most recent call last):   File "D:/Dev/foo.py", line 37, in &lt;module&gt;
      datestring = date.min.strftime("%d-%m-%Y") ValueError: year=1 is before 1900; the datetime strftime() methods require year &gt;= 1900
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Why is the min date not 1900 then???</p>
  
  <p>I'm using storing date.min in the <strong>init</strong> of a class as to set it to an empty date sortof. When I persist this to the sqlite database, I do not have a Null date this way.</p>
  
  <p>I do this because when I read back an empty date from the db, it raises an error in dbapi2.py in the convertdate function</p>
  
  <p>How do you guys solve this?</p>