What data type is the date column?
Date, DateTime, or Timestamp?
A date column requires the format of yyyy-mm-dd. the valid range it will accept is:
'1000-01-01' to '9999-12-31'
for a Date column, to set the default of 01/01/1901, you would need to enter it as:
1901-01-01
DateTime or TimeStamp fields require the date format of:
yyyy-mm-dd hh:ii:ss
for a DateTime field, the supported range is '1000-01-01 00:00:00' to '9999-12-31 23:59:59', so you would enter the default as:
1901-01-01 00:00:00
A Timestamp, though cannot be set to a date prior to 1970. a timestamp is calculated as the number of seconds that has passed since 1/1/1970. the supported range for a timestamp column is:
'1970-01-01 00:00:01' to '2038-01-19 03:14:07
see the following page for more details
datetime.html