Short list of values from long list of duplicates

Okay, after searching and trying - I think I'm going to need INDEX and maybe MATCH but those are not commands I use in my day-to-day, so I'm stumped on how to make them work.

I've got a column of dates, (not sequential, several days skip). I want to build a "short list" of all the date values in the column - so that even though 2/5/2012 shows up 12 times, I want it to appear on a list once. I can copy the cells down as much as I need to - until I identify all the possible dates from the column.
Ultimately, the next column to the right would have a countif statement involving my result and the column, to give me an occurance count for each date. The 'short list' can occur at the bottom of the date column, or in another column, no matter.

file attached.


thanks a million for any and all assistance!