With RSS 1.0, date and creator were reused from Dublin Core. A content:encoded element was created to handle the full content. As these were widely supported by every viewer that cared about such things, early RSS 2.0 feeds used these elements.
<dc:date>2003-09-11T14:00:00-07:00</dc:date>
<dc:creator>Sam Ruby</dc:creator>
<content:encoded>
<b>bold text</b>
</content:encoded>