diff --git a/docs/CHANGELOG.md b/docs/CHANGELOG.md
index 3a8df868..38121ee5 100644
--- a/docs/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/docs/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,6 +1,10 @@
 # Changelog
 All changes to this project will be documented in this file.
 
+## [9.5.1] - 2020-04-27
+
+(http client) Set default values for most HttpRequestArgs struct members (fix #185)
+
 ## [9.5.0] - 2020-04-25
 
 (ssl) Default to OpenSSL on Windows, since it can load the system certificates by default
diff --git a/ixwebsocket/IXHttp.h b/ixwebsocket/IXHttp.h
index 329db45a..71a0db69 100644
--- a/ixwebsocket/IXHttp.h
+++ b/ixwebsocket/IXHttp.h
@@ -78,12 +78,12 @@ namespace ix
         WebSocketHttpHeaders extraHeaders;
         std::string body;
         std::string multipartBoundary;
-        int connectTimeout;
-        int transferTimeout;
-        bool followRedirects;
-        int maxRedirects;
-        bool verbose;
-        bool compress;
+        int connectTimeout = 60;
+        int transferTimeout = 1800;
+        bool followRedirects = true;
+        int maxRedirects = 5;
+        bool verbose = false;
+        bool compress = true;
         Logger logger;
         OnProgressCallback onProgressCallback;
     };
diff --git a/ixwebsocket/IXWebSocketVersion.h b/ixwebsocket/IXWebSocketVersion.h
index 56ea9eed..cf91d71d 100644
--- a/ixwebsocket/IXWebSocketVersion.h
+++ b/ixwebsocket/IXWebSocketVersion.h
@@ -6,4 +6,4 @@
 
 #pragma once
 
-#define IX_WEBSOCKET_VERSION "9.5.0"
+#define IX_WEBSOCKET_VERSION "9.5.1"