the_time and Unix date

We have archives dating back to 1926, and it is important that we are able to show the posts original date, rather than the date at which they were published. We have of course modified all the posts publishing dates to reflect this.

However, posts with a published date prior to 1970 show their dates as today’s date. I believe this has to do with UNIX date system.

This behavior occurs with any theme as well as the default theme for WP 2.9x so it would indicate that the_time() function somehow cannot cope with pre 1970 dates.

Any hack or work around, allowing us to a)show the original published date of pre 1970 posts and b)do a chronological time sort on those original dates?

With thanks