In Postgres 9.5, I was surprised to see the result seen below while experimenting with year 0001 (no year zero 0000).

Offset of -07:52:58?

Some example code. Note that I mixed use of TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE and TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE, so read carefully.

SET TIME ZONE 'America/Los_Angeles' ;

SELECT (TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE '2015-01-01 00:00:00.0', 
        TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE '0001-01-01 00:00:00.0Z', 
        TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE '0001-01-01 00:00:00.0Z') ;

("2015-01-01 00:00:00-08","0001-12-31 16:07:02-07:52:58 BC","0001-01-01 00:00:00")

I am surprised by that second value: 0001-12-31 16:07:02-07:52:58 BC. I understand that we must go backwards eight hours as America/Los_Angeles is eight hours behind UTC with an offset of -08:00. But instead of -08:00 the offset is -07:52:58. Why?

No Problem Under UTC

No such issue when entering data under UTC.

SET TIME ZONE 'UTC' ;

SELECT (TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE '2015-01-01 00:00:00.0',  
        TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE '0001-01-01 00:00:00.0Z', 
        TIMESTAMP WITHOUT TIME ZONE '0001-01-01 00:00:00.0Z');

("2015-01-01 00:00:00+00","0001-01-01 00:00:00+00","0001-01-01 00:00:00")

No Year Zero

By the way, the date portion seems to be correct. It seems there is no year 0000, that being the pivot point between the “BC” and “AD” eras. Take the first moment of year 0001, subtract an hour, and you get the year 0001 BC – so no year zero.

SET TIME ZONE 'UTC' ;

INSERT INTO moment_  -- TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE.
VALUES ( TIMESTAMP '0001-01-01 00:00:00.0Z' - INTERVAL '1 hour' ) ;

SET TIME ZONE 'UTC' ;

TABLE moment_ ;

The result is the year 0001 BC, so we jump from 0001 to 0001 BC; no year zero 0000.

"0001-12-31 23:00:00+00 BC"