The lithium battery in PCs holds bios software and time in memory (among other things) when the machine is turned off. I'm not sure about linux, but certainly Win and Apple machines update their time every few days, so you could have a dead battery but correct time either if the machine is left on, or if it's just updated.

This sounds like a function of the time zone settings of each computer. Was the person in a time zone 6 hours ahead of where you are?

snidely, thanks for the response.
The receiver of my message in question and I are in the same time zone. He is on Cox, I am on SBCGLOBAL.
I'll change battery in the next few days and report back to the group.
Steve

If you sent the email at 9:00 pm and that time is shown in your outbox copy, your battery is fine, I think you misread my message.

If you don't keep your sent messages, send yourself a message, what time does it show?

Snidley, I sent myself a test message, same time going and returning. I spot checked a few messages that different people responded to. Only the one I mentioned in the original post had a different time stamp.
Perhaps my friend has the problem instead of me.
Thanks again for your help.
Steve

If the email was sent to a "Yahoo" email address-it could show almost anytime-
Everybody I have talked to that has Yahoo has reported problems with the last few upgrades/updates/enhancement.
I send out emails to people at 3PM eastern time, get a response a day later- looking at the time it shows I sent the original message, -it shows up as 5AM the following day-