Today is Sunday, January 9, the ninth day of 2005.
There are 356 days left in the year.
A quick recap of what has gone on this date in history
1760 - Afghans defeat Marathas in Battle of Barari Ghat.
1923 - The Spanish inventor Don Juan de la Cierva made the first successful flight in an autogyro, forerunner of the helicopter.
1953 - A S Korean passenger ferry sank off Pusan with the loss of 349 lives.
1960 - Work started on the Aswan High Dam in Egypt.
1962 - Japan and the United States signed an agreement for Japan to pay $290 million in settlement of its debt for post-war US aid.
1980 - Sixty-three Muslim fanatics were beheaded in Saudi Arabia for their part in the siege of the Great Mosque in Mecca in November 1979.
1992 - Serbs in Bosnia declared their own republic and said it would remain part of federal Yugoslavia.
1996 - Chechen rebels seized some 2,000 hostages in a southern Russian town and threatened to kill them if their demands were not met.
2002 - Colombia's government ended three years of peace talks with FARC rebels, saying it was giving the leftist guerrillas 48 hours to vacate a demilitarised zone in the south of the country.
2004 - The families of 170 people killed in the 1989 bombing of a French UTA airliner, blamed on six Libyans, signed a $170 million compensation deal with Libya; Turkey signed a protocol to abolish the death penalty even in wartime as it sought to meet criteria to begin entry talks with the EU.
Today's birthday
Karel Capek, Czech writer (1890-1938)
Simone de Beauvoir, French author (1908-1986)
Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States (1913-1994)
Har Gobind Khorana, Indian biochemist (1922--)
Sergio García, Spanish golfer (1980--)