… were born not one but two great men. Their work reverberates today, and the controversies they tried to solve sometimes still feel unsolved — but not because they didn’t solve them.
One was born in a log cabin, the other in relative luxury. The log-cabin boy lost his mother to milk sickness when he was just nine years old; the other had lost his own a year earlier, when he was only eight.
These two motherless boys grew up outside the embrace of conventional religion, and made only token gestures toward it as they aged. Yet each became a cultural deity. Today, the face of each graces a commonly used monetary note in their native lands.
The influence of Abraham Lincoln is obvious and great, and America and many other nations have absorbed it. But the human race may never fully comprehend the influence of Charles Darwin. It may be that we have not evolved far enough from the apes to be able to accept them as our cousins.
Though no one could know it then, February 12, 1809 was quite a day.