Question

I’m about to implement a small program where i need the elapsed seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970 to 00:00:00 UTC on June 22, 2009. Could anyone please point me in the right direction, as to how to achieve this.

Answer 1

public static void main(String[] args) {
    Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
    calendar.set(2009, 5, 22, 0, 0, 0);
    System.out.println("ms: " + calendar.getTimeInMillis());
}

If you want to parse String representation of Date, take a look at SimpleDateFormat. Although it was suggested in one answer, you should avoid using static instances as they are not thread safe.