Happy birthday, Charles!
In case you're unfamiliar with this respectable gentleman, here are a few quick facts that might be of interest to you, dear reader.
Of course, as I'm sure you are aware, Darwin is the author of famous works such as On the Origin of the Species, Decent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, and Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, and he is largely responsible for the development of the theory of evolution.
As I'm sure you are also aware, Darwin traveled around the world aboard the HMS Beagle collecting, observing and describing hundreds of species previously unknown to science, many of which have since taken his name such as Darwin's Finches.
However, did you know that Darwin originally collected these small brown-black birds without recording a single note about the locations they were collected? In fact, he had tossed them aside, thinking nothing of them. It wasn't until he presented his avian specimens to the ornithologist John Gould, that anyone realized the birds were different species.
Gould was probably like, "Ummm, hey D-win. Did you notice that these little finches are all different species? No? Wait, you didn't gather any data on them?! Epic fail Chuck. Epic fail..."
So Darwin scrambled and found a shipmate who had written down the locations and it was all good.
Perhaps they should be called Gould's finches?
Anywho. Charles still managed to develop his hypothesis on the variation and isolation of these and other species from his voyage and the Origin still became a worldwide best-seller!
Happy Birthday Chuck!
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