If you have a look at your post, there is no table as such - just multiple lines of text. Whether what you have in your document is in a table - and what its structure might be - cannot be seen from that.
Since when is a '23.061976' date in any country? Similarly, '1976' is not a date - it is merely a number. You might interpret it as a date, but it could just as easily be a part number. To a computer, it's nothing more than a number.
To understand how a number sort works, visualize your dates as not having the periods. In such a scenario, a number sort for:
02.08.1974
23.12.1974
01.05.1976


11.06.1976
18.07.1977
would return the same as:
01051976
02081974
11061976
18071977
23121974
(note the re-ordering)

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

It just goes to show that to understand computing one really should start at the beginning but so few of us do. I've grasped the idea but still have a little way to go but many thanks.