20 things you probably didn't know about Darwin

[alienlovechild 75]

Second in an occasional series of features marking the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (Feb. 12, 1809) and the 150th anniversary of his landmark book about evolution and natural selection, "On the Origin of Species."

In helping to explain the nature of life, Charles Darwin became bigger than life. It's the smaller things, though, that help explain the man.

1. Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day. As a boy, Darwin was called Charley or Bobby. As a teen, his nickname was “Gas,” a reference to his penchant for smelly chemistry experiments.

2. Darwin the student was unremarkable. His father considered him to be excessively lazy, declaring that he “cared for nothing but shooting, dogs and rat-catching.”

3. For a time, at his parents' insistence, Darwin aspired to become a doctor, but he loathed the sight of blood and quit.

4. Eventually, Darwin earned a degree in theology from Cambridge University.

5. Darwin loved collecting things, especially beetles. It's said he lost a girlfriend in college because he paid more attention to his bugs than to her.

6. The exploratory voyages of HMS Beagle were supposed to cover two years, but they lasted almost five (1831-1836). Darwin was initially hired to be more companion than ship's naturalist to the Beagle's well-heeled captain, Robert FitzRoy.

7. Over the course of the Beagle's travels, Darwin produced 368 pages of zoology notes, 1,383 pages of geology notes, and a 770-page diary. He also collected 1,529 specimens preserved in alcohol and 3,907 dried specimens.

8. On Darwin's 25th birthday in 1834, FitzRoy named a mountain after him. Mount Darwin is the highest peak (8,163 feet) in Tierra del Fuego. There are also mountains named after Darwin in Antarctica, Tasmania and California (part of the Sierra Nevada range; 13,837 feet).

9. Darwin's curiosity about the natural world went beyond chronicling his observations of life. He also tasted it. At Cambridge University, Darwin belonged to the “Gourmet Club,” which met weekly to dine upon fare like hawk, bittern and owl.

10. In 1839, at the age of 29, Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgewood. In writing down the pros and cons of getting married, he determined that having a wife was “better than a dog anyhow.” Charles and Emma remained married for 43 years and had 10 children; seven survived to adulthood.

11. Darwin loved music, but he was tone deaf. Each night of his marriage, he would spend half an hour listening to Emma, who had been trained by Frederic Chopin, play the piano.

12. Darwin found Shakespeare to be “so intolerably dull that it nauseated me.”

13. More than two decades after the Beagle voyages, Darwin published his seminal “On the Origins of Species,” rushing to print in 1859 to beat similar, independent findings by fellow British naturalist and friend Alfred Russel Wallace.

Darwin was not entirely pleased with his work, considering the 500-plus-page book to be an “abstract.” He had envisioned something five times as long.

14. Exactly 1,250 copies of “Origins” were printed in its first run. All were distributed or sold within a day or so of publication, making the book an immediate best-seller. The book went through six editions during Darwin's lifetime. He made alterations and corrections in all of them.

15. Herbert Spencer, a British philosopher and contemporary of Darwin, coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” in 1864. Darwin adopted the term in the fifth edition of “Origins,” giving Spencer full credit.

16. Darwin, a self-taught zoologist, spent eight years on the taxonomy of barnacles.

17. Darwin wrote 16 books, including a lengthy treatise on emotions in humans and other animals. He believed blushing to be a sign of deceit. His last book, published in 1881, was “The Formation of Vegetable Mold, Through the Action of Worms, With Observations on Their Habits.”

18. After the Beagle voyages, Darwin never traveled far from his home near the village of Downe in Kent, England. He was plagued by chronic poor health and unexplained ailments, whose symptoms, including headaches, heart palpitations, muscle spasms, pain, vomiting and vertigo, sent him to bed for months at a time.

Numerous conditions have been blamed for Darwin's poor health, including panic disorder, lactose intolerance and hypochondria. Many historians, however, suspect he suffered from Chagas disease, a tropical parasitic ailment likely contracted during his time in South America. (Darwin described being bitten by an insect now known to be a vector of the disease.)

Darwin died of heart failure in 1882 at the age of 73.

19. Darwin ultimately considered himself to be an agnostic. At the time of his death, a local evangelist insisted Darwin had renounced evolution and re-embraced Christianity. Darwin's family refuted the claim. His last words, according to Emma, were, “I am not in the least afraid to die.”

20. Darwin wanted to be buried without fuss near his home, but he received a state funeral – one of only five such events not involving English royalty in the 19th century. Among his pallbearers were Wallace and legendary naturalist-explorers Joseph Dalton Hooker and Thomas Huxley, both staunch defenders of Darwin's work.

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/200...e/?zIndex=50113

Edited February 9, 2009 by alienlovechild

[Saddle Bronc 124]

On #12: well, glad to see I'm in illustrious company of finding Shakespeare a grind (having had 3 of the Bard's plays as mandatory part of high-school curriculum in Calgary....).

[Emancipation 2]

11. Darwin loved music, but he was tone deaf. Each night of his marriage, he would spend half an hour listening to Emma, who had been trained by Frederic Chopin, play the piano.

as a pianist.. # 11 is wonderful... plus it would have rocked to have Chopin as a piano teacher!

[Jasman0717 9]

Glad we got that cleared up

[almaty 19]

Gourmet Club,” which met weekly to dine upon fare like hawk, bittern and owl.

great chow......

[HAL 9000 96]

Go Charles! [Darwin]

[Ban Hammer 13,680]

Go Charles! [Darwin]

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[HAL 9000 96]

Go Charles! [Darwin]

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Jajajajaajaj yeah... Go [Away] Charles! j/k

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Go Charles! [Darwin]

Indeed!!!

[Ban Hammer 13,680]

Go Charles! [Darwin]

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Jajajajaajaj yeah... Go [Away] Charles! j/k

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[HAL 9000 96]

Go Charles! [Darwin]

hmpfff i thought you rang!

Jajajajaajaj yeah... Go [Away] Charles! j/k

where is that power cord of yours?

This is gonna be the eternal futile attempt at silencing me.

[Mononoke28 137]

I find it interesting that he married his first cousin after all the evolution studies he made during his lifetime.

Diana

[HAL 9000 96]

I find it interesting that he married his first cousin after all the evolution studies he made during his lifetime.

Diana

Yeah Gregor Mendel's work hadn't quite resonated all that much with him.

The Origin of the Species is a great... long... and boring read.