News about Charles Darwin

It was one of Britain's greatest ever structures, constructed in London's Hyde Park in just 190 days between 1850 and 1851 - in time for Prince Albert's Great Exhibition. Now, a study answers the mystery of how London's 1,850-foot-long Crystal Palace - at the time was the world's largest building - was assembled so quickly. Designed by renowned English architect Sir Joseph Paxton, the Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park at a cost of £80,000 (nearly £10 million in today's money).

DailyMail.com has heard from scientists in other fields whose life-long pursuit of empirical truth in the lab has led them to 'believe in God as the author of creation.'

According to the Woodland Trust, 11 trees on the theme of magnificent oaks had been chosen by a panel of tree experts along with one nominated by members of the public via social media. They include oaks which are over a thousand years old, many with huge girths, individuals sporting ancient graffiti and a wide array of wildlife, hanging on in Sitka spruce plantations or threatened with felling for a bypass. Dr Kate Lewthwaite, citizen science manager at the Woodland Trust, said: 'We chose the iconic oak because it captures people's imaginations - from their leaves to their acorns, these trees are ingrained in our heritage - and the ancients are so impressive in terms of their sheer size and age. 'Some oaks that are alive today were already centuries old at the time of Queen Elizabeth I, or Charles Darwin.

Photographic calling cards of the leading lights of Victorian horticulture, described as the 'original social media', have gone on display online. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has made its collection of 19th century calling cards available to the public for the first time in a digital gallery, as it calls for help in identifying the handful of unnamed portraits among them. The early photographs left by visitors were displayed in the homes of their hosts as evidence of their popularity and social standing, or could even be traded among friends and sold by photographers, the charity said. The collection, which came into the RHS's care via one of the society's former secretaries and from an author and director of science at the charity, includes nurserymen, flower growers, professional gardeners, botanists, and entomologists, many of whom are depicted nowhere else.

I wonder if Keir 'Change Britain' Starmer is going to tackle the nation's feral pigeon problem. He doesn't strike me as a wildlife-culling kind of a guy. Not a cull, a rebrand.

Sandy Robertson hardly expected to be stranded in the Pacific, covered in thick black human excrement, turtle guts and seawater at just 12 years old.

It was an age of exploration. In the early 20th century, the great minds of the world transformed the lives of millions with advances in emerging new fields. Science fiction dreamed up brave new worlds and the utopian forms they could take, and ambitious powers with newfound wealth offered the means to realise them. At the Pasteur Institute in Paris, rising scientist Ilya Ivanov (pictured left) saw the opportunity to push the frontiers of modern science by taking mankind itself to the next evolutionary level. Pictured right: a still image from Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024), imagining what such a world might look like. Inset: a 1984 CGI image of a man-ape hybrid

CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Non-stop activities, that's some people's idea of a holiday. Off the ship to see the sun rise over the mountains, breakfast 50 miles up the road, back to the coast for water-skiing before lunch. Just the thought of all that leaves me knackered. It's a bit much for Nick Knowles, too, in his new travel show. Most of the time he's out of breath, and sometimes he can hardly stand up to say his bit to camera. Before the opening credits finished rolling, he was halfway up a cliff face in the Andes - not so much climbing freestyle as being winched up on a rope with a harness round his hefty rear end. 'My hands are running out of grip,' he gasped, 100 feet up. Back on the ground, the wiry fellow called Jorge holding the other end of the rope was in danger of being catapulted into the air if Nick slipped.

It's an 'iconic question' - why do giraffes have long necks? Now, scientists at Penn State University reveal a fascinating new theory that builds on work from legendary English naturalist Charles Darwin (inset) in the 19th century. Millions of years ago, giraffes with the longest necks could reach more leaves on the trees and survive competition - before passing the long-necked trait down in their genes, Darwin said.

Move aside, Michael Phelps - there's a new record-breaking swimmer in town. A silky shark has broken the world record after swimming a staggering 17,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean. The shark, nicknamed 'Genie' was first spotted near Wolf Island to the north of the Galapagos Marine Reserve on July 2021. Researchers from the Charles Darwin Foundation then tracked its epic voyage, which was spread out across 546 days.

There were two barriers in the way of Charles Darwin securing a berth on the Beagle - his father and his nose! Darwin had just graduated from the University of Cambridge and his father, Robert, was naturally concerned; the Beagle was a ten-gun brig, 235 tons and just 90 feet long. This type of ship was nicknamed 'coffin' because of its tendency to sink in rough seas. Robert would only allow his son to set off on the voyage if he was sponsored by someone he respected. That man was Charles's uncle Josiah Wedgwood II, the son of the founder of Wedgwood pottery. The second obstacle was FitzRoy. He was an aristocratic young man who was looking for someone of equal status he could dine and converse with during the long voyage. FitzRoy believed that one's facial features said much about one's character.

On the picturesque Isle of Wight, a Jurassic-sized property deal involving a historic past and close links to the discovery of a rare dinosaur is up for auction. The Grade II listed property on Rectory Lane, Brighstone Bay, is listed for £1.4 million, where the remains of a rare fossil were discovered on a cliff nearby by clergyman and palaeontologist Reverend William D Fox. However, the house has more than dinosaur bones in its closet, as Charles Darwin himself paid a visit to the reverend at the sprawling six-bedroom home. The building has a history intertwined with Rev. John Bruton's remarkable work. Fox, who discovered a fossil in a bed of blue shale clay at a cliff on Brighstone Bay in 1865, was the first explorer of a dinosaur fossil. He brought the bones back to his home and meticulously reconstructed the ancient beast across the lawn

In the late 1930s, David Barron was just into his teens when he first appeared at the Mid-Yorkshire Institution for the Mentally Defective. He had been taken from a foster home where he had been cruelly treated, and had been taken there by local council authorities. 'Goodbye, lad,' 'We're hoping you'll soon settle in,' they said. He was led into a huge dining room that was packed with around 500 people. It was not the noise that would remain in his memory, but the sight of the bars on the windows. With the clanging of keys locking and unlocking every room and corridor, the sense that he was in jail has been closed in. David was an orphanage. There was no one around who was missing him, and there was no one to investigate him. The institution, which is ten miles west of York, is located on a large, forbidding'reformatory' building surrounded by strictly segregated dormitory blocks for both men and women, later renamed Whixley Colony.

Children born as a result of a first-cousins or close relatives have a higher chance of inheriting a variety of genetic disorders than the general population. For example, one academic study looking at the prevalence of 'extreme' inbreeding - where parents of a child are presumed to be first- or second-degree relatives - found 125 British people out of a sample of 450,000. The first degree links include those between parent and child, while the second degree includes more distant, but also genetic close relatives, such as half-siblings. The 2019 report was extrapolated to the wider population, implying that 13,000 Brits were born by extreme inbreeding. The authors noted that true rates could be significantly higher or lower depending on the subject and the small number of Brits included in the study. For the first cousin marriages, they were once more popular and included some well-known historical figures. Charles Darwin (right), the father of evolution, married Emma Wedgwood (left), and Albert Einstein (right) married his first cousin Elsa Lowenthal (right).

Early Earth may have had the necessary elements for life long before anything on our planet existed. Scientists now have proof that these substances may have existed on their own. These experiments lend new insight into the 'RNA World' hypothesis of life,' claiming that the early Earth's primordial soup was brimming with single-stranded RNA that eventually gave rise to organisms.

Human tails were discovered 25 million years ago by scientists at New York University, who discovered it all came down to a single snippet of DNA that is not found in monkeys. Tail length in certain animals is determined by the gene TBXT, and tails are lost when a small amount of DNA called AluY is introduced.

Captain James Cook is ripe for demolition at this moment, according to the attackers. He has also been targeted in Australia by 'anti-racism' campaigners, who have been bitterly chastised in Australasia, particularly Australia. And now the vandals have struck. Not sure about the Cook statues in the United Kingdom yet, but in Australia, the same statues were on display. The bronze statue of Cook (top right), which was built in 1914, has been sawn off at the ankles and kicked off its plinth (left), which has been painted in red with the phrase 'The Colony will fall'. In contrast, red is the vandals' color, since it implies that there is blood on the hands of such figures. Cooking is inaccurate. Red paint was also sprayed over Melbourne's Queen Victoria monument, which was daubed with the same word. Cook's depiction of taking possession of New South Wales is on display at the bottom right.

Following the discovery, the anonymous man, who is believed to be from the United States, took to Quora to request assistance. He delved into the mystery in the story, which has recently resurfaced, when he confessed to being closely linked to a family friend for the better part of a decade. Hundreds of stunned readers flooded to the comments to weigh in on the controversy.

What will 2024 bring? One thing is for certain: nothing ever stays the same in a garden. Ciar Byrne, a UK garden specialist, has shared her predictions...

With England now well into storm season, we can often take Met Office warnings for granted, as they seem to be released on an almost daily basis throughout winter. However, weather forecasts and the famous Shipping Forecast by BBC Radio 4 each day can be traced back to 1859, the forecasting agency's first days, after a devastating storm smashed across the Irish Sea. On October 25, the 'Royal Charter Gale' struck without alert killing 800 people and destroying 133 ships, including the vessel that later gave it its name. Wind speeds in the Mersey were the highest ever recorded at the time, and twice as many people were lost at sea around the British Isles as opposed to the entire 1858 period. The storm, which was the most severe to reach the Irish Sea in the 19th century, inspired Met Office founder Captain Robert FitzRoy to develop a national storm warning system.

When playing a two-person game, Israeli researchers conditioned a group of men to smell either women's emotional tears or saline, a mix of salt and water. The game was supposed to incite aggressive conduct against the other player, whom the guys were led to believe was cheating. The guys may get revenge on the other player by causing them to forfeit money if given the opportunity.

When he bought the 117-year-old bungalow in March, Tom Glanfield set a record for the price paid for a house on the exclusive Dorset peninsula. However, the 45-year-old will now flatten the colonial-style house that occupies the largest waterside plot on the millionaires' row.

Lewis Pugh has smashed records in endurance swimming as a result of climate change awareness. He tells Samuel Fishwick what inspired him to go to such great lengths

This majestic oak tree was already 300 years old, more than 200 years ago, before a young Charles Darwin may have played in its branches. Darwin's Oak and eight other ancient trees will be felled to make way for the £80 million ($97.3 million) Shrewsbury North West Relief Road (NWRR). Despite months of resistance, it was only after a narrow vote on the Shropshire planning commission condemning the trees to utterment. Advocates for the road insist it will link the North and West of the town, reducing traffic and improving the economy. However, campaigners and local opposition organizations claim that the move would jeopardize a vital piece of green space.