HMS Beagle to set sail for LEGO – only with your help!

Luis Peña has designed a LEGO set for HMS Beagle, complete with Charles Darwin and Captain Fitzroy minifigs, among others. He posted it to the LEGO Ideas website, in which set suggestions receive support and if they reach 10,000 supporters within a year of being posted, LEGO will consider making the set a reality.

I supported this set, and hope you will too. It’s necessary to create an account on the site in order to cast your support, but it’s quick and easy, and worth it, don’t you think?

Here are some images from Luis:

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Darwin gift from my mom

Today I received this in the mail from my mother, which she found in an antique shop. Despite the water damage, it’s in readable condition.

Carroll Lane Fenton, Darwin as a Naturalist [Little Blue Book No. 567] (Girard, KA: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1924), 64 pages.

Fenton also authored other Little Blue Books about animals, biology, evolution, geology, life of the past, and Ersnt Haeckel. This pdf gives a list of the entire series.

Thanks, Mom!

New USPS American Scientist stamps feature Darwin supporter and botanist Asa Gray

The United States Postal Service has released another stamp collection in their American Scientist series. Included here are chemist Melvin Calvin; botanist Asa Gray; physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer; and biochemist Severo Ochoa.

Asa Gray? Hell yes!

Asa Gray, one of the first professional botanists in the United States, advanced the specialized field of plant geography and became the principal American advocate of evolutionary theory in the mid-nineteenth century.

I went to my nearest post office on Tuesday morning and purchased 3 sheets: one for myself, one to send to Richard Carter, FCD, and another to send to playwright Craig Baxter, who penned the fabulous Darwin/Gray drama, Re:Design.

Has the USPS ever released a stamp in any way connected to evolution or Darwin?

Another eBay item

UPDATE (3/23/11): George Beccaloni found online an image of this card with names included (and I like how what looks like a monkey at the top right is closest to Darwin):

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This Victorian cabinet card was offered recently on eBay. The seller knew that Charles Darwin was one of the figures, but who are the others?

Top row: ???, ???, Charles Darwin
Bottom row: ???, Herbert Spencer, ???

Need some holiday cards…

Option 1:

Option 2:

Both from Jen McCreight.

Darwin’s theory (postcard)

Saw this up on eBay:



“Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp”

For any Darwin stamp collectors out there:

The May-June issue of Topical Time, a philatelic (stamp) magazine, has a great article by Barry N. Floyd titled, “Charles Darwin: the great naturalist.”  There have been (apparently) 140 stamps honoring Darwin, his work, or his travels, and for those you who are stamp-collecting evolution fans, the American Topical Association has produced a checklist for you (you have to join first…then they’ll send you the list). I don’t have access to the checklist, but I can’t seem to find any Darwin stamps released by the United States.  (I know, I know — you are shocked.)  One might argue that the United States wouldn’t bother to issue a stamp honoring somebody who never even came to the country…but that didn’t stop  North Korea (see stamp block below), Democratic Republic of Congo, and many others.

Anyone a member of ATA and have access to the article and checklist?

Also, see here.