Today is Thursday, Jan. 9, the ninth day of 2025. There are 356 days left in the year.

On Jan. 9, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone at the Macworld conference in San Francisco.

In 1861, Mississippi became the second state to secede from the Union, the same day the Star of the West, a merchant vessel bringing reinforcements and supplies to Federal troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, retreated because of artillery fire.

In 1945, during World War II, American forces began landing on the shores of Lingayen Gulf in the Philippines as the Battle of Luzon got underway, resulting in an Allied victory over Imperial Japanese forces.

In 2005, Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority. following the death of Yasser Arafat the previous November.

In 2018, downpours sent mud and boulders roaring down Southern California hillsides that had been stripped of vegetation by a gigantic wildfire; more than 20 people died and hundreds of homes were damaged or destroyed.

In 2022, 17 people, including eight children, died after a fire sparked by a malfunctioning space heater filled a high-rise apartment building with smoke in the New York City borough of the Bronx; it was the city’s deadliest blaze in three decades.