August 29, 1997 was Michael Jackson's 40th birthday. In the universe of The Terminator films, August 29, 1997 was the day that Skynet became self-aware, launched US nuclear missles at their targets in Russia (and between the Russians retalitory strike against US targets and the original US strike snuffed out a total of three billion human lives) and started what would later be called "The War Against The Machines". As noted by Sarah Connor in the historical recreation of this possibility, the survivors of August 29, 1997 would term this day "Judgement Day".

However, due to some temporal mucking about, Judgement Day was postponed. This was equated to being unable to truly stop fate. In this timeline Judgement Day was pushed back to July 24, 2004 at approx 6:18 PM.

The date and time of the "revised" Judgement Day comes from the watch Arnold sees in T3, in addition to his dialogue in the same film. We partied once in celebration of the mock destruction of humanity, now we can do it again! Rock on! Oh, on a side note..any other fictional dates for the end of the world?