char[(n)] Fixed-length non-Unicode character data with length of n characters. n must be a value from 1 through 8,000. Storage size is n bytes. nchar[(n)] Fixed-length Unicode character data with length of n characters. n must be a value from 1 through 4,000. Storage size is two times n bytes. varchar[(n)] Variable-length non-Unicode character data [...]

When you insert or update a date in a mysql Table you have to remember that Mysql have 3 types of date DATETIME         ( default format 0000-00-00 00:00:00 ) DATE                ( default format 0000-00-00 ) TIMESTAMP      ( default format 0000-00-00 00:00:00 ) PHP code:       DATE ->  $mysqldate = date( ‘Y-m-d’ );       DATETIME, TSTAMP [...]