title: Specify date from a character with lubridate (mdy) in r
body: <p>I have problems using the mdy formatting of the <code>parse_date_time</code> function of <code>lubridate</code>.</p>
  
  <pre><code># does work
  date &lt;- "21 December 2016"
  date_text &lt;- parse_date_time(date, "dmy", tz = "UTC")
  # does work
  date &lt;- "2016 December 21"
  date_text &lt;- parse_date_time(date, "ymd", tz = "UTC")
  # does work
  date &lt;- "2016 21 December"
  date_text &lt;- parse_date_time(date, "ydm", tz = "UTC")
  # DOES NOT WORK
  date &lt;- "December 21 2016"
  date_text &lt;- parse_date_time(date, "mdy", tz = "UTC")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can anyone tell me why the last version won't work and what to do to make it work?
  I get the message:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Warning message:
  All formats failed to parse. No formats found. 
  </code></pre>