The Origin

On this day in 1831 the HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin a passenger on board, departed the UK for a survey of South America, a voyage Darwin later said, “determined my whole career”.

Page in Darwin’s Notebook B that is stored in the Cambridge University Library

Charles Darwin’s initial Tree of Life sketch, which appears in his Notebook B, in 1837, shows his early theoretical insight of how a genus of related species might originate by divergence from a starting point (1).

The Aftermath

‘Tis the season of jokes and trivia:

  1. What has a head and tail and is brown but has no legs?
  2. What is Britain’s oldest recorded town?
  3. Who was the first UK Prime Minister?
  4. What is placed on the table, cut and passed but not eaten?

Answers: 1. A penny. 2. Colchester. 3. Robert Walpole 1721. 4. Pack of cards.

It’s All Relative

  • Einstein adored playing violin and said that if he had not gone into physics, he likely would have become a musician.
  • He called Nationalism an infantile disease – the measles of mankind.
  • Einstein’s brain was removed without permission during his autopsy and was sent to be tested for its perceived secrets.
Albert Einstein