History of the Day for:
January 9
- 1718: France declared war on Spain.
- 1788: Connecticut became the fifth state by ratifying the Constitution of the United States.
- 1793: The first hot-air balloon flight in the U.S. lifted off in Philadelphia with Jean-Pierre Blanchard of France as the balloonist.
- 1799: The first income tax was imposed in England.
- 1839: Thomas Henderson measured the first stellar parallax: Alpha Centauri.
- 1848: The first commercial bank in San Francisco was established.
- 1861: The Star of the West, a merchant vessel bringing reinforcements to Federal troops at Fort Sumter, S.C., retreated after being fired on by a battery in the harbor. It was the first hostile act of the Civil War; Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union.
- 1894: The movie "Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze" was released in the movie theaters.
- 1903: Two N.Y. businessmen bought the struggling American League Baltimore baseball franchise for $18,000 and moved it to New York, where it became the Yankees.
- 1913: Richard Milhous Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, was born in Yorba Linda, Calif.
- 1918: Battle of Bear Valley: The last battle of the American Indian Wars.
- 1942: The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff was created.
- 1945: American soldiers led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur invaded Luzon in the Philippines.
- 1951: The Washington Capitals NBA club folded.
- 1951: The United Nations headquarters officially opens in New York City.
- 1956: "Dear Abby," an advice column written by Abigail Van Buren, made its debut.
- 1967: The NFL's New Orleans franchise took the name the Saints.
- 1968: The "Surveyor Seven" space probe made a soft landing on the moon, marking the end of the American series of unmanned explorations of the lunar surface.
- 1969: The Concorde jetliner made its first test flight, in Bristol, England.
- 1990: The Supreme Court struck down Dallas' ordinance imposing strict zoning on sexually oriented businesses.
- 1991: A special committee of the Major League Baseball authorities officially banned all-time hit leader Pete Rose from being elected into the Hall of Fame.
- 2005: Elections are held to replace Yasser Arafat as head of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He is succeeded by Rawhi Fattouh.