Darwin in the Galápagos
Five weeks that set evolutionary theory in motion
In September and October 1835 HMS Beagle spent about five weeks in the Galápagos, where the young naturalist Charles Darwin collected birds, plants and tortoises. He later noticed that mockingbirds and finches differed markedly from island to island. That puzzle helped lead him to natural selection, set out in 1859 in On the Origin of Species.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 19th century
Did you know
Darwin spent five weeks on the Galápagos in 1835, but did not publish On the Origin of Species until 24 years later.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Europe
- 1814–1815 Congress of Vienna — 21 years earlier
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire — 2 years earlier
- 1839 Birth of photography: the daguerreotype — 4 years later
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland — 10 years later
- 1848–1849 Revolutions of 1848 — 13 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1812 Napoleon's invasion of Russia — 23 years earlier
- 1853–1856 Crimean War — 18 years later
Middle East
- 1828 Treaty of Turkmenchay — 7 years earlier
- 1839 The Edict of Gülhane opens the Tanzimat — 4 years later
- 1839–1842 First Anglo-Afghan War — 4 years later
Africa
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek — same year
- 1847 Liberia declares independence — 12 years later
Asia
- 1815 Eruption of Mount Tambora — 20 years earlier
- 1819 Raffles founds modern Singapore — 16 years earlier
- c. 1831 Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawa — 4 years earlier
- 1839–1842 First Opium War — 4 years later
- 1853–1854 Commodore Perry's Black Ships — 18 years later
Oceania
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes — 16 years later
Alive at the time
- Alexander Pushkin (aged 36)
- Charles Darwin (aged 26)
- Abraham Lincoln (aged 26)
- Karl Marx (aged 17)
- Queen Victoria (aged 16)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (aged 14)
- Leo Tolstoy (aged 7)
- Dmitri Mendeleev (aged 1)
- Katsushika Hokusai (aged 75)
- Andrew Jackson (aged 68)