Who2 Editorial Blog

Notes and Commentary from the Editors

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Which Came First: The Darwin or the Abe?

"As Aquarians, they should both be stubborn, visionary, tolerant, free-spirited, rebellious, genial but remote and detached -- hmmm, so far, so good."

It's true: Scientist Charles Darwin and President Abraham Lincoln were born on the exact same day: 12 February 1809.

If you're wondering which one was actually born first: we don't know. We came up empty after a rather extensive search for the exact birth times of both men.

On the Lincoln side, we have Carl Sandburg's word for it that Lincoln was born in the morning:

One morning in February 1809, Tom Lincoln came out of his cabin to the road, stopped a neighbor and asked him to tell "the granny woman," Aunt Peggy Walters, that Nancy would need help soon. On the morning of February 12, a Sunday, the granny woman was at the cabin. And she and Tom Lincoln and the moaning Nancy Hanks welcomed into a world of battle and blood, of whispering dreams and wistful dust, a new child, a boy.

A little later that morning Tom Lincoln threw extra wood on the fire, an extra bearskin over the mother, and walked two miles up the road to where the Sparrows, Tom and Betsy, lived.

This from a condensed version of Sandburg's famous six-volume biography of Lincoln. Sandburg admits that the scene was reported years later by a local boy, Dennis Hanks, "whose nimble mind sometimes invented more than he saw or heard." So: don't bank on it.

On the Darwin side, it's a pretty sure bet that nobody was throwing an extra bearskin over the mother. Darwin's father was Dr. Robert Darwin, a successful physician in Shrewsbury, Shropshire; his mother Susannah was the son of Josiah Wedgwood, the famous potter. A few days after his birth, Darwin was baptized by the parish clergyman in the local Unitarian chapel.

But we find no mention of the exact time of his birth, even in Darwin's own autobiography. (We did find a wonderful family-edited version of that book from the Stanford Library, courtesy of Google Books.)

One source does offer exact birth times for both men: the astrology site Astrotheme.com. Astrologers obsess over exact birth times in preparing their charts, and Astrotheme makes the unlikely claim that Lincoln was born at exactly 6:54 am, with Darwin coming in at 3:00 am. (Speaking of the inventions of nimble minds...) Among other things, it's doubtful that Tom Lincoln's "granny woman" checked her Timex at the moment of birth and noted that the minute hand was just passing 6:54.

Those speculations aside, one thing is in Darwin's favor: England is five time zones ahead of Kentucky. (Though formal world time zones weren't formally installed until years later.)

So Darwin, at least, had a five-hour head start.

Labels: Abraham Lincoln, Carl Sandburg, Charles Darwin, Disputed Birth Dates

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 9:27 AM Share on Facebook 0 comments

Sunday, January 25, 2009

250 Choruses of 'Auld Lang Syne'

Robert Burns, beloved Scots poet, was born 250 years ago today.

Burns wrote the poems "Tam O'Shanter," "Auld Lang Syne" -- yes, set to music it's now a New Year's Eve favorite -- and a lot of other grand old poems of ancient Scotland. A bit like The Brothers Grimm and their Children's and Household Tales, or Carl Sandburg and The American Songbag, Burns spent as much time gathering old native poems and music as he did writing new ones. His collection The Scots Musical Museum was a smash in Edinburgh in 1787.

Burns was no softie and he brought the gorse as well as the heather. Here's a snippet from "Tam O'Shanter" (and Charlie Daniels fans may notice a "Devil Went Down to Georgia" touch, this time with Old Scratch on the bagpipes):

There sat auld Nick, in shape o' beast;
A towzie tyke, black, grim and large,
To gie them music was his charge:
He screw'd the pipes and gart them skirl,
Till roof and rafters a' did dirl.

On the minus side, Burns's crazy dialect can be nearly impossible to grasp these days. Later from that same poem:

The reel'd, they set, they cross'd, they cleekit,
Till ilka carlin swat and reekit,
And coost her duddies to the wark,
And linkit at it in her sark!

"Coost her duddies to the wark?"

Well, god bless you anyway, Mr. Burns, wherever you are. And happy birthday.

Labels: Carl Sandburg, Charlie Daniels, Robert Burns, The Brothers Grimm

Posted by Mr. Holznagel at 8:10 AM Share on Facebook 0 comments

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