Evolution Events

1809 Feb 12 Charles Darwin is Born
Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England on 12 February 1809 at his family home, the Mount. He was the fifth of six children of wealthy society doctor and financi...
1818 Sep Charles Darwin attends Anglican Shrewsbury School
Darwin joined his brother, Erasmus, at Shrewsbury Grammar School, run by the Revd. Samuel Butler. The focus of study was Greek and Roman reading and grammar. He developed a great fondness...
1828 Jan 13 Charles Darwin Attends The University of Cambridge
His father was unhappy that his younger son would not become a physician and "was very properly vehement against my turning an idle sporting man, which then seemed my probable destination...
1837 Jan 4 Charles Darwin First Speech to the Geological Society of London
With Lyell's enthusiastic backing, Darwin read his first paper to the Geological Society of London on 4 January 1837, arguing that the South American landmass was slowly rising. On the sa...
1858 Jul 1 Charles Darwin First Goes Public on Views of Evolution
Darwin’s book was half way when, on 18 June 1858, he received a paper from Wallace describing natural selection. Shocked that he had been “forestalled”, Darwin sent it on to Lyell, as req...
1858 Aug 20 Charles Darwin Publishes 'On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties'
This famous paper originally appeared in the Journal of the Linnean Society of London, Zoology, but has been printed in books, in part or in whole, several times since. The events and cor...
1859 Nov 24 Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species is Published
On the Origin of Species proved unexpectedly popular, with the entire stock of 1,250 copies oversubscribed when it went on sale to booksellers on 22 November 1859. In the book, Darwin set...
1871 Mar Charles Darwin's "The Descent of Man" was Published
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is a book on evolutionary theory by English naturalist Charles Darwin, first published in 1871. It was Darwin's second great book on e...
1882 Apr 19 Charles Darwin Dies
He died at Down House on 19 April 1882. He had expected to be buried in St Mary’s churchyard at Downe, but at the request of Darwin’s colleagues, William Spottiswoode (President of the Ro...
1925 May 5 John Scopes is Arrested
On May 5, 1925, high school science teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in one of Tennessee's public schools. Scopes had agreed to act as defendant in a case intended ...
1925 Jul 21 John Scopes Found Guilty for Teaching Evolution
John Scopes was an activist and a teacher. In what was called the “Scopes Monkey Trial”, John was charged on May 5th, 1925 of teaching evolution in his Tennessee classroom. On July 21 he ...
2009 Oct 1 "Ardi" Fossil is described, changing theories on human evolution
"No modern ape is a realistic proxy for characterizing early hominid evolution." —Science Magazine