Nah. With binary, you can lose one hex digit AND the max year would be 2047 (11 bits year, 4 bits month, 5 bits day). What's not to like about hex anyway?
What I read was that it never happened in the old versions and it wasn't a bug in civ5, in that, it was a nod to the legend. But apparently Sid Meier said it didn't happen in the original games.
Thing is, it did happen in the earlier games and I doubt Sid programmed all the games himself. They just put his sexy face on them like the Nintendo Quality Control stamp.