Answer by Alexander for Converting string into datetime

Here are two solutions using Pandas to convert dates formatted as strings into datetime.date objects.

import pandas as pd

dates = ['2015-12-25', '2015-12-26']

# 1) Use a list comprehension.
>>> [d.date() for d in pd.to_datetime(dates)]
[datetime.date(2015, 12, 25), datetime.date(2015, 12, 26)]

# 2) Convert the dates to a DatetimeIndex and extract the python dates.
>>> pd.DatetimeIndex(dates).date.tolist()
[datetime.date(2015, 12, 25), datetime.date(2015, 12, 26)]

Timings

dates = pd.DatetimeIndex(start='2000-1-1', end='2010-1-1', freq='d').date.tolist()

>>> %timeit [d.date() for d in pd.to_datetime(dates)]
# 100 loops, best of 3: 3.11 ms per loop

>>> %timeit pd.DatetimeIndex(dates).date.tolist()
# 100 loops, best of 3: 6.85 ms per loop

And here is how to convert the OP's original date-time examples:

datetimes = ['Jun 1 2005  1:33PM', 'Aug 28 1999 12:00AM']

>>> pd.to_datetime(datetimes).to_pydatetime().tolist()
[datetime.datetime(2005, 6, 1, 13, 33), 
 datetime.datetime(1999, 8, 28, 0, 0)]

There are many options for converting from the strings to Pandas Timestamps using to_datetime, so check the docs if you need anything special.

Likewise, Timestamps have many properties and methods that can be accessed in addition to .date