DID you know…that Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day and the same year… 206 years ago today

On 12 February 1809, Charles Darwin was born in Shropshire to a wealthy family: his father was Dr Robert Darwin and  his mother Susannah was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, the pottery superstar

On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born to a farming family in a one-room Kentucky log cabin.

They made not have much in common but politically there was a lot that united them. Darwin was the grandson of two prominent fighters against slavery Erasmus Darwin on his father’s side, and of Josiah Wedgwood on his mother’s side.

Edgar Allen Poe, Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Nikolai Gogol were also born in 1809. Political revolutionary and working class hero, Thomas Payne died in 1809 and Thomas Jefferson retired as President – James Madison was elected the 4th President of the USA. Spencer Perceval became British prime minister (and later was famous as the only PM to have been assassinated) and George III was on the throne….

Both photographs are in the public domain.