MYSQL PHP Sort table rows with full names of dates by date

I have a table where there is a date field. The values of the items inserted there are full date names.

How will I be able to sort the selected result by proper date?

Example table

February 10, 2010
January 5, 2010
January 4, 2010
January 5, 2009
January 6, 2010
March 21, 2010

What I want to happen

January 5, 2009
January 4, 2010
January 5, 2010
January 6, 2010
February 10, 2010
March 21, 2010

Is there a mysql function for this?

Here is my query. Date field is named date

$sql = "SELECT * FROM `$table` ORDER BY date";

Unfortunately, this only sorts the result alphabetically. How should I modify/change the query?

Your future insights and feedback are greatly appreciated! :)

UPDATE

So the problem is that the field is string/varchar. Is it possible to change this after the data has been stored? And would the query above automatically sort it correctly?

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This is because the column in the database is setup as a string/varchar, versus a datetime field. There are a few ways to approach this, but the easiest would be to convert your fields to datetime fields instead.

An inefficient solution would be to do:

$sql = "SELECT * FROM `$table` ORDER BY STR_TO_DATE(`date`)";

This will convert your strings to dates, and then sort them, but will have to do this for every row in your database which could get cumbersome. Bottom line: If you're working with datetimes, use a datetime field.