When was Harry Potter born?

With the new release of J.K. Rowlings books, children every where are going bonkers. With her sixth book, our favorite author has deffinately shown her almost limitless ability to create a timeless magical world. Wait... did I say timeless? It is very interesting to note that not once does Rowling mention the year in her books. She probably does this in order to create that very effect, i.e. it could be any time within the last 20 years and anywhere in the general London area. However, in Rowling's books, as we all know, the devil is in the details. In book one, she lets a few details slip which actually allow the reader to place not only the year it takes place, but also Harry's birthdate. In true Harry Potter style, we have to piece the mystery together. Here are the hints.

In the first book, on page 43, Dudley says "Its monday. The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."

On page 45, it says, "the lighted dial of Dudley's watch told Harry that he would be 11 in 10 minutes time."

This would mean that Harry's birthday, well known to be July 31, would fall on a Tuesday. Out of the last 30 years, in only 3 of them does July 31 fall on a Tuesday. These years are 1984, 1990, 2001.

This, however, is contradicted by book 2 where Harry celebrates Nearly-Headless-Nick's 500th deathday party and sees a cake that says that he died October 31, 1492. This would make the present date in book 2 1992. If the first theory was right, Harry would have started his third year in 1992. Also, according to the Harry Potter Lexicon,

"In book four, Harry tells Sirius that his cousin threw his Playstation out the window. Sony released the first Playstation in December of 1994, and that was in Japan. If we accept the timeline derived from the Deathday Party cake, Harry is telling Sirius about this incident in July of 1994, a half-year earlier."

So unless nearly headless Nick is getting senile in his old death, and Duddley has a Japanese Playstation there is a contradiction. I think that his is in fact the best way, because Rowling obviously wanted her stories to be timeless. It is interesting though; The dates almost fit, but not quite. This is perfectly in line with the spirit of the books. They took place some time in the recent past, we just don't know exactly when.