title: Python - Importing Excel dates converts to number
body: <p>I'm trying to learn to the use the xlrd package in Python to read Excel files, and I have made a sample file which contains a list of chronological dates and in the second column the day of the week it corresponds to.</p>
  
  <p>The problem is that when I read in the data it displays it as a number.  How can I get the date to display the way it is supposed to?</p>
  
  <pre><code>[u'Date', u'Day']
  [41162.0, u'Monday']
  [41163.0, u'Tuesday']
  [41164.0, u'Wednesday']
  [41165.0, u'Thursday']
  [41166.0, u'Friday']
  </code></pre>