A wrapper around PHP date_parse http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15350309/heuristic-fuzzy-date-extraction-from-the-string

FuzzyDateParser.php

<?php
/**
 * FuzzyDateParser is meerly a "convinience" wrapper around date_parse
 * functionality from ext/date/lib/timelib code (which does all the 
 * scanning and other "fuzzy" guessing work).
 *
 * @see http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.date-parse.php
 * @see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15350309/heuristic-fuzzy-date-extraction-from-the-string
 *
 * by Yauhen Yakimovich, 2013
 *
 * Usage example:
 *
 * <code>
 * echo  FuzzyDateParser::fromText('banana 1/2/3');
 * echo  FuzzyDateParser::fromText('Joe Soap was born on 12 February 1981'));
 * echo  FuzzyDateParser::fromText('2005 Feb., reprint'));
 * echo  FuzzyDateParser::fromText('!'); # will fail to parse, producing an empty string.
 * echo  FuzzyDateParser::fromText('monkey 2010-07-10 loves bananas and php');
 * </code>
 *
 */


class FuzzyDateParser 
{   
    public $verbose = false;

    public $result;

    public $hasFailed = false;


    public static function fromText($text) 
    {
        $instance = new FuzzyDateParser();
        return $instance->parse($text);
    }

    public function parse($text)
    {   
        static $ignoredErrors = array(
            'The timezone could not be found in the database',
        );
        $this->result = date_parse($text);
        $errors = array();
        if ($this->result['error_count'] > 0) {
            foreach ($this->result['errors'] as $errorMessage) {
                if (!in_array($errorMessage, $ignoredErrors)) { 
                    $errors[] = $errorMessage;
                }
            }
        }
        $this->result['error_count'] = count($errors);
        $this->result['errors'] = $errors;

        $this->hasFailed = ($this->result['error_count'] > 0 
            && $this->result['year'] === false 
            && $this->result['year'] === false 
            && $this->result['day'] === false);
        if ($this->hasFailed and $this->verbose) {
            print_r($this->result);
        }

        return $this;
    }

    function __toString()
    {        
        return ($this->hasFailed) ? '' : sprintf(
            '%04d-%02d-%02d', 
            $this->result['year'], 
            $this->result['month'], 
            $this->result['day']
        );
    }

}

This is fantastic and much more eloquent than my attempt! Thank you!