Dates
We can say dates either with the day before the month, or the month before the day:
The first of January / January the first.

Remember to use ordinal numbers for dates.
(The first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the twenty-second, the thirty-first etc.)

Years
For years up until 2000, separate the four numbers into two pairs of two:
1965 = nineteen sixty-five
1871 = eighteen seventy-one 
1999 = nineteen ninety-nine

For this decade, you need to say “two thousand and —-” in British English:
2001 = two thousand and one
2009 = two thousand and nine