I was in London today and got the chance to celebrate Darwin Day – the commemoration of Charles Darwin’s birthday on Feb 12th – with a visit to the Natural History Museum. 

I learned that after the publication of “On the origins of species”, much to the chagrin of one of Darwin’s detractors, Richard Owen, curator of the Natural History Museum at the time, visitors would ask to see the different types of pigeons that Mr. Darwin had written about! Darwin had experimented with breeding pigeons in his garden to better understand artificial selection and, in the process, gain ammunition for the principles of natural selection that he would later write about. It was nice to learn that the museum eventually responded to popular demand by prominently displaying the pigeons as one of the museums’ “treasures”. 

I also picked up this illustrated biography at the museum gift shop – Darwin’s Notebook – and can strongly recommend it as it covers a great deal of past biographies while using photos, drawings, and text to give a vivid portrait of Darwin and his work.