How to change the system date in Linux

A friend needed help changing the system date on his Linux box today. This is usually a simple task for Linux users but newbies tend to get confused by the "date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]" line in the man page.
To simplify, this is how you do it.
Set the current date to April 7 2008 8:42:45pm.
The easy way,
#date -s "7 April 2008 20:42:45"
The harder way,
#date 040720422008.45
The break down: MM DD hh mm YYYY ss
MM = month = 04
DD = day = 07
hh = hour = 20
mm = minute = 42
YYYY = year = 2008
ss = second = 450

sample output,
[root@klmsyslog01p ~]# date -s "7 April 2008 20:42:45"
Mon Apr 7 20:42:45 MYT 2008
[root@klmsyslog01p ~]#
[root@kmmserver01p ~]# date 040720422008.45
Mon Apr 7 20:42:45 MYT 2008
[root@kmmserver01p ~]#