#1 DUSTY 19th CENTURY

How about we explore some 19th Century characters in dusty old history?                    

We're not going to 'bag' the dearly departed; we'll just share some factual tid-bits.

Promise you won’t just take our word for it – check the facts for yourself.
Be warned though!....this won't be boring , it may even be life changing for you (like it has been for me).

Can you imagine that?...our lives transformed by dusty old history??

Here goes………

Notice the skin colour change from dark to light

In 1839, a British naval officer named Port Darwin, in Australia's Northern Territory, to honour the British naturalist:

Charles Robert DARWIN (1809 - 1882)

Darwin was born on the same day as…….Abraham Lincoln!
Sunday 12 February 1809.

He earned a Bachelor’s degree in theology from Cambridge in 1831.
While travelling on H.M.S. Beagle as an amateur naturalist for 5 years he received Charles Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’, first published 1830.

The full title of Darwin's publication in 1859 was:

"On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life."
(the last bit is normally ignored) 

The town was established under South Australian administration as ‘Palmerston’ in 1869 but under federal control reverted to ‘Darwin’ in 1911, only to be flattened by Cyclone Tracy on Christmas Day 1974.

Mmmm…have we got this straight?...

...a young theologian whose hobby is nature study, devours with relish a book written by a lawyer whose hobby happens to be geology, and then himself writes a racist book and is honoured by having a capital city named after him in a land already inhabited by indigenous people that were rounded up and shot for evolution specimens in European museums ??...and this hero of ‘modern science’ was further honoured with a state funeral and interment beside Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey??

Meanwhile, three years after Darwin’s book sold out on the first day of publication, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Thursday, 1 January, 1863 – ‘The Day of Jubilee’ – for African-Americans, not aboriginal Australians under British rule.

By the way, to this day the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution states in Part III, Section 25:

“For the purposes of the last section (membership of the House of Representatives), if by the law of any State all persons of any race are disqualified from voting at elections for the more numerous House of the Parliament of the State, then, in reckoning the number of the people of the State or of the Commonwealth, persons of that race resident in that State shall not be counted.”

Also in Part V, Section 51: "The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:
(xxvi) the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws." 

NEXT: 'Can't beat 'em?...join 'em!'
Why was young Darwin so taken with Lyell and his book?  Click on:

 http://hotspuds.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/cant-beat-emthen-join-em.html

Photo credits:

evolution / dailymail.co.uk
Darwin / en.wikipedia.com