Interesting facts about Charles Darwin
Portrait of a young Charles Darwin
This is what Charles Darwin looked like when John Lort Stokes and Charles Wickham named Port Darwin after him. He was only about 30 years old.
Image: Water-colour portrait of Charles Darwin painted by George Richmond in the late 1830s
Harriet the tortoise
Harriet the tortoise died in 2006 at the Australian Zoo, and at the time was purported to be the oldest living creature on earth at 175 years old.
Studies carried out on Harriet's origins credit her with being maybe one of three tortoises collected by Charles Darwin during his visit to the Galapagos Islands in 1835. Darwin gave the tortoises to Charles Wickham who donated them to the Brisbane Zoo. In a letter to Huxley, Darwin comments on speaking to Wickham about the tortoises from the 1835 expedition, "because he has them". The tortoises are recorded as being donated by Wickham.
There is no way of conclusively proving that Harriet was one of the tortoises collected by Darwin but her age and genetics certainly make it likely.
Intriguing discoveries
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While visiting Madagascar during his legendary voyage aboard the HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin was intrigued to find a giant waxy white orchid with a nectar spur nearly a foot long. Though he was unable to discover how the unusual plant was pollinated, he hypothesized the existence of a remarkable insect with a proboscis one foot long. Darwin's theory was understandably ridiculed.
Once again, however, Darwin had the last laugh. Twenty years later, a nocturnal moth was discovered - with a five and a half inch wingspan and a proboscis one foot long.
The orchid was named Angraecum sesquipedale and the moth, discovered in Madagascar in 1903, was named Xanthopan morganii praedicta. The subspecific epithet "praedicta" was given in honor of the fact that Darwin predicted its existence.
Karl Marx
Michael R. Rose in his biography on Charles Darwin, Darwin’s Spectre: Evolutionary Biology in the Modern World, states that Karl Marx had wanted to dedicate Das Kapital to Charles Darwin, who when asked by Marx, politely declined.
Charles Darwin's son visited Port Darwin 1882
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| Above Right: Members of the Royal Geographic Society “Transit of Venus” group, December 1882. (L to R) Cuthbert Peek, Charles Grover, William Morris, ‘Gunner’ Bailey and Leonard Darwin. (photo from Hume Family Collection – University of Queensland Library) |
In 1882 Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin, led an expedition for the Royal Geographical Society to observe the Transit of Venus. Eminent Astronomers of their day, Cuthbert Peek and Charles Grover were also members of this expedition.
The group, pictured below, stopped in Darwin with the necessary instruments set the true longitude for Australian observatories, which resulted in being able to fix Australian Standard time. In the area at Parliament House that is now ‘Liberty Square’ a stone plinth was set to mark the important place of this observation – it became know as the Port Darwin Astronomical Observation Pillar.
A replica of this pillar is now erected at the site.
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Replica of the Port Darwin Astronomical Observation Pillar next to the Administrators residence. |