Happy birthday to @CDarwin and @AbeLincolnWP !

With a throwback to my 2013 avatar!

Happy birthday, Henry Shaw, founder of the Missouri Botanical Garden, aka "Shaw's Garden" (@mobotnews)

Shaw's Mausoleum

Today is the birthday of Henry Shaw, founder of the Missouri Botanical Garden. I paid my first visit to "Shaw's Garden" in 2006 (photo set) when I was attending at TDWG meeting before heading on to San Francisco. Since that first visit, I've made many more trips to STL and the Garden (most recently, just a few days ago (photo set).

As a member of the Biodiversity Heritage Library, the Garden has hosted many of our BHL meetings over the year (as well as

Though the Garden is, of course, famed for the beautiful floral and botanical displays, it is also an important scientific facility with an amazing herbarium and research library (The Peter H. Raven Library).

The Garden will be having some special events in honor of it's founders 213th birthday, see more information here.

Some random shots from visits to "MOBOT" (as I continue to think of the Garden) are below. The first item is an herbarium specimen collected by Charles Darwin.

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Lincoln and Darwin, at 204 years old, items from Smithsonian collections

Never as fun or interesting when an anniversary isn't a "significant" year, but still good to celebrate Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Darwin at 204 years old.

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Here are a couple of pictures related to Lincoln and Darwin. At top is a 3D print of Lincoln's life mask (in miniature). Below is a Hudsonian Godwit, specimen collected by Charles Darwin in the East Falkland Islands in 1833. Smithsonian, Natural History Museum. Godwits are shore birds (family Scolopacidae), large sandpipers with long legs and bills. newsdesk.si.edu/photos/tag-hudsonian-gotwit

Happy Birthday Charles Darwin (b. 1809)

Here's some of my "Darwiniana":

• Origin of Species
• Autobiography of Charles Darwin
• The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals
• Darwin's Dangerious Idea by Daniel Dennett
• The Heretic in Darwin's Court (a biography of Alfred Wallace) by Ross Slotten
• Huxley (biography of Thomas Huxley) by Adrian Desmond