Today is the anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, both born February 12, 1809.
They led very different lives.
Lincoln was born in a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm, Hodgenville, LaRue County, Kentucky.
Darwin was born into a privileged family at The Mount House, Shrewsbury, United Kingdom.
Darwin was educated at The University of Edinburgh Medical School, and Christ’s College, Cambridge. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s of Arts from Cambridge.
Lincoln was self-educated, except for some spotty itinerant teachers when he was young.
On 29 July 1838 Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgewood of the pottery family.
Lincoln married Mary Todd Lincoln November 4, 1842. They had met in 1839.
In 1859 Darwin published his On the Origin of Species. This was his second book, his first being The Voyage of the Beagle in 1839. He was already well known around the world within scientific circles at this time.
In 1859 Lincoln was the lawyer for Simeon Quinn “Peachy” Harrison, who was on trial for murder. The victim had left a dying declaration that he started the fight in which he was murdered, and Lincoln argued so forcefully that the judge reversed his decision that that declaration was hearsay, and Harrison was acquitted. This was Lincoln’s launching point for his campaign for the U.S. Presidency.
Lincoln of course, was assassinated, dying on April 15, 1865 at the age of 56.
Darwin also died in April, on 19 April 1882 at the age of 73.
The Darwin stamp is a self adhesive die-cut, issued in 2009 to celebrate the bicentenary of his birth. The white around the stamp is the backing paper (though not the royal portrait or face value).
The stamp of Lincoln was issued in 1958 was issued for his 150th birth anniversary.
Both men changed the world in huge ways and their deeds continue to be relevant and important today.
Abraham Lincoln oversaw the American Civil War, which prevented the secession of the Confederate States. This resulted in the United States becoming a major world power only 50 years later, and a world superpower after that.
Charles Darwin did not invent the idea of evolution, among several others his grandfather Erasmus Darwin had written about it in 1794. But he put in the work and collected the evidence to turn organic evolution from just an idea into a scientific theory that has become the bedrock of biology and medicine. Even today, we’re reaping the benefits of his work through the development of vaccines based on viral evolution.
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