java.util.Date is limited to the year range (1970 - 2037) and this is inconvenient when working with historic data, birthdates, etc. A runtime exception of java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: year out of range is thrown when an incorrect year is used.

Here is a test case :

import java.util.*;

 
public class DateTest
{
 
  public static void main (String[] args)
  {
    // set the year at 2038
    Date mybd = new Date(138, 10, 15);

    System.out.println("Year : " + mybd.getYear());
    System.out.println("Month : " + mybd.getMonth());
    System.out.println("Day : " + mybd.getDay());

    System.exit(0);

  }
}