what's in a date

It shows the power of culture and language that people all over the English-speaking world respond at such a deep level to the two numbers 9-11. It's a date of course -- a very terrible one in world history. But it's a date that only Americans would normally use, surely. To me it says, when extended, 'the 9th of November', which is not what it actually means, which is September 11. But I'm English, and neither the Irish nor the English (I live in Ireland) say September 11: we say September the 11th. Neither do we write 9.11.01 if we mean September, we write 11.9.01. If we want the month-day-year order, we go to a lot of trouble to be clear and write September 11(th), 2001 -- the -th is optional.

Americans often leave out the article in dates and other constructions with numbers, and very confusingly they go month-day-year, against logic, which would surely suggest going from small to large, in ascending order, i.e. day-month-year. When did Americans start doing things in this somewhat odd way?

Working in the library at Penn recently I saw the date on a letter given as '6.8'. I asked a librarian if I could be 100% certain that it referred to June, because in my world this would be August. He thought about it and said that he couldn't be sure because he didn't know when the month-day order was adopted. So I couldn't date the letter. What is the answer?

When people start complaining that everywhere is the same -- Starbucks in Dublin, New York, and Moscow (?) -- we should remember how very different this way of saying and writing the date is. It shows deep cultural differences that I for one would be very sad to see given up (and we know who would be doing the giving up, I think). 'June 21' is as American as apple pie.