datepicker doesn't recognize date in July 4, 1776 format

[rogersbrad]

I have used the above date for testing, there is an issue where typing this date into the textbox is only sometimes understood by the datepicker.

If I change the format to 'DD/MM/YYYY' then it does see this date correctly. but i need the result to be in the format of mm/dd/yyyy.

am somewhat new to this and jquery. if it were possible to utilize the wrong format but add some function call or ? to swap the month and day? so the output into the textbox would be in mm/dd/yyyy, even though the format itself is DD/MM/YYYY. why does it understand the above date in one format but not the other? thanks