Darwin's Birthday (1809)

It's a commonly-known fact that Charles Darwin was exactly the same age as Abraham Lincoln. Which gives you cause to think. The idea that out of all the thousands of famous people that have ever been born, two were actually born on the same day is almost too unlikely to believe. Rather like the idea that camels and canaries share the same, distant common ancestor - a kind of lemur called an Ai-Ai. Of course, they both evolved to lose those rather disturbing fingers that the Ai-Ai possesses, thus making them much more suited to desert life.

Darwin it was who, in 1831, took to sea under the command of Robert Fitzroy and embarked on what turned out to be the gastronomic frenzy of a lifetime.

His early days on board ship were blighted by sea-sicknesses, and Charlie D stuck to raisins - unusually for a man who had, in his time, eaten kestrels and owls. Maybe, as he leaned against the side of the boat, retching wretchedly, he considered that he had bittern off more than he could chew. However once over that, he made up for it big time. Over the next few years, Darwin consumed a wide variety of the members of the animal kingdom including albatrosses (which weren't considered unlucky till Coleridge wrote that poem), giant tortoises (he was very fond of the soup, and kindly sent me the recipe when I lived in 19th Century Wessex), rheas, armadillo and a puma.  Many endangered species that we know today are only endangered because Darwin ate so many of them in the 19th Century. Even today there are two species of puffin named "Darwin's Tasty Puffin" and "Darwin's Needs-a-bit-more-salt Puffin". Indeed, one species of bird was famously named literally at the table - the "Great Auk".

It was while exploring the Galapagos Island that Darwin made the discovery that would make him famous, when the Spanish cook, Fernando, served up a dish of finches cooked in birds-eye chilli and lemon. "How come these finches each have a different shape and a different kind of beak?" Darwin asked. The answer was that the different finch shapes had been adapted to the different sauce types - the  plumper, grain-eating finches went better with the garlic + herb sauce, while the "very hot" sauce covered up the taste of insectivorous birds.

And so Darwin developed his theory of natural selection. In a nutshell (cracked easily by the muscular beak of the Large Tree Finch), animals that are tasty get eaten more than those that aren't. Which is why nothing ever tastes as good as Mum's cooking - all the animals have evolved to taste worse since you left home.

So, Charles Darwin, we salute you for your indefatigable culinary adventures. And well done to Abraham Lincoln as well - a man so honoured in the UK that we named one of our middle-sized Midlands cities after him.