The year 1809 -- two hundred years ago -- brought us two of the most influential people in the history of the world: Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln, born within two days of each other. Both are being suitably celebrated on the 200th anniversaries of their births.
There were other notables born in 1809: Nikolai Gogol, Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Felix Mendelssohn, and Louis Braille (inventor of reading system for the blind).
Which brings to mind that other incredible year of births, 1882, which brought the world none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Jacques Maritain, Georges Braque, and Igor Stravinsky.
Expand that a bit to include the five year span of 1879 thru 1983 and we add: Albert Einstein, John Maynard Keynes, Pable Picasso, E.M. Forster, Franz Kafka, Lytton Strachey, Bela Bartok, Paul Klee, Walter Gropius, and Helen Keller -- but also Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, and Benito Mussolini.
Wonder who 2009 will be remembered for?
Ralph
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Correction: Darwin and Lincoln were actually born on the same day, February 12th, 1809.
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