Instead of 10-24-95 or 24 Oct 1994, why not 19951024.  Dates are then
     numbers and can be searched with greater than (after), equal to (same
     date), and less than (before) operators.  You can't do that easily
     with mixed/embedded alphanumeric names and you can't do it if the
     numeric date is written in day-month-year order, ie. 24101995 is
     greater than 01012000, but it comes before the new millenium.