Well that's strange. The company was founded in 1976, so it was certainly plausible that they would be an early domain registration, but 1996 wouldn't qualify as that!

I wonder why you got a different date back?

If you do a whois, there is a: created: 1985-01-01

string in the record (along with the 1996 date), so it's a bit confusing.

That 1985-01-01 is when .COM itself (TLD) was created.

Ah, OK. Got it. Thanks.