What's wrong with this date ?

hi there, I try to save a record (in the "date" type in MySQL) from the <INPUT type=text> by : $query = "INSERT INTO $table VALUES ($post_id, 0, '$topic', '$uname', '$body', $date, '$newdate', 0) "; But it couldn't work (I used $date or '$date' on above, but they got the same results) ! It showed me the wrong value, as : 1970-0-0 (always this, although I try to input different values in the text box with the date format is YYYY-MM-DD) I don't understand the way MySQL saves my date field in his data (is it YYYY-MM-DD ?) Can anyone help me in this case ? Thanks much... ps : I used the $date field in "varchar(20) type" instead. BWT, what's different beween the Varchar(length) type with the Char(length) type ?