Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January 9

January 9: Martyrs' Day in Panama.

• 1839 – The French Academy of Sciences announced the Daguerreotype photographic process, named after its inventor, French artist and chemist Louis Daguerre.

• 1861 – The civilian ship Star of the West was fired upon as it attempted to send supplies and reinforcements to Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor before the American Civil War.

• 1878 – Umberto I became King of Italy.

• 1916 – World War I: The last British troops evacuated from Gallipoli, as the Ottoman Empire prevailed over of a joint British and French operation to capture Istanbul at the Battle of Gallipoli.

• 1923 – The autogyro (pictured), a type of rotorcraft invented by civil engineer and pilot Juan de la Cierva, made its first successful flight at Cuatro Vientos Airfield in Madrid, Spain.

• 1972 – RMS Queen Elizabeth, an ocean liner which sailed the Atlantic Ocean for the Cunard White Star Line, was destroyed by fire in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong.

• 2005 – Mahmoud Abbas was elected President of the Palestinian National Authority to replace Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004.