Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24304025-20131219173544/@comment-1293767-20131219181214

The newspaper Regina reads in "Welcome to Storybrooke" is dated October 23, 1983. It takes on the first full day of the curse, but the curse hit the night before when Owen and Kurt were camping. So, Emma was likely born on October 22 (according to our world dating), unless there was a technicality and she was born after midnight. Since the pilot takes place on her 28th birthday, it means the pilot was meant to occur on October 22/23, 2011. This is reinforced when we also find out that Henry got the OUAT book on an unknown date in October 2011. (For some reason I thought he got it a few months before he found Emma, but I guess not.)

I like tracking timelines too, especially with shows as confusing as this one, so I feel I should probably rewatch the first season.

The only thing is, at the end of "Going Home," Regina says: "Nothing will be left behind. Including your memories. It's just what the curse does. Storybrooke will no longer exist; it won't ever have existed. So these last years will be gone from both your memories." This suggests that at minimum, two years passed in-universe, which seems to be at odds with what a lot of people have been theorizing about the timeline.