There is an odd implementation detail of many themes that has created a parsing problem with timestamps. It is actually a WordPress/PHP issue. The below is an excerpt from _s(Underscores) that appears in a large amount of themes.
$time_string = sprintf( $time_string, esc_attr( get_the_date( 'c' ) ), get_the_date(), esc_attr( get_the_modified_date( 'c' ) ), get_the_modified_date() );
The string in question is used in a generated line of HTML, which usually looks like something below.
<time datetime="2016-06-21T22:48:40+00:00">June 21, 2016</time>
A parser reading the above will read it as 10:48PM UTC/GMT. Assuming it converted that into local time, it would actually be 6:48PM EDT. However, in reality, I posted at 10:48PM Eastern Time. It just omitted the timezone offset, putting in +00:00.
The timezone offset is properly shown if you replace ‘c’ with DATE_W3C or DATE_ATOM. The alternative is to add the date in as GMT. Without proper timezone offsets, posts will be parsed as being at the wrong time.
Related:
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/25768
https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/20973
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