Two birthdays for the price of one!

February 12, 1809, saw the birth of two little boys who would grow up to do great things. Such great things that two librarians were both inspired to blog about them! How famous can you get!

Famous Little Boy #1

Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the U.S. and guided the country through its darkest hour, the Civil War. Finding more information about this fascinating historical figure is easy—because so much has been written about him—and hard—because so much has been written about him! You can get an idea of this abundance looking at the listing in the post below.

On the web there's even more Lincoln information and artifacts. Ford's Theatre, where he was assassinated in 1865, is a site you might not think of for Lincoln research, but they have a Lincoln Museum onsite and also provide this website. [The image is from the Wikimedia Commons.]

Famous Little Boy #2

Charles Darwin developed the theory of evolution through natural selection, which not only revolutionized the science of biology, but also gave everyone a new way to look at the natural world. When I was in London last semester I enjoyed visiting the special exhibit at their Natural History Museum that was dedicated to Darwin's bicentennial. It was a really fascinating collection of memorabilia, handwritten notes, letters, photographs and books. [The Museum is high on Darwin even in non-bicentennial years; the photo is one I took in the museum's main hall of the Darwin statue there.]

I saw a particular San Antonio-Darwin connection in the exhibit that delighted me as as Spurs fan. One of the objects on display was a beetle Darwin collected on his famous voyage on the Beagle. And it was from Bahia Blanca, Argentina, one of the ship's ports of call, and the hometown of our own Manu Ginobili! It really is a small world, isn't it?