Date format parse exception - "EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss Z yyyy"

I'm going to assume that Locale.getDefault() for you is pl-PL since you seem to be in Poland.

English words in date strings therefore cause an unparseable date.

An appropriate Polish date String would be something like

"Wt paź 16 00:00:00 -0500 2013"

Otherwise, change your Locale to Locale.ENGLISH so that the SimpleDateFormat object can parse String dates with English words.

Instead of using Locale.default that you and others often don't know which default, you can decide by using locale.ENGLISH because I see your string date is format in English. If you are at other countries, the format will be different.

Here is my example code:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
        SimpleDateFormat parserSDF = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss Z yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH);
        Date date = parserSDF.parse("Wed Oct 16 00:00:00 CEST 2013");
        System.out.println("date: " + date.toString());
    } catch (ParseException ex) {
        ex.printStackTrace();
    }
}

The result will be : date: Wed Oct 16 05:00:00 ICT 2013. Or you can decide which part of this date to be printed, by using its fields.

Hope this help :)

I think the original Exception is due to Z in your format. Per documentation:

Z   Time zone   RFC 822 time zone   -0800

most likely you meant to use lower case z