September 15th: The Day Darwin Arrived on the Galapagos Islands

On September 15th 1835, Charles Darwin reached the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador aboard his infamous voyager ship, the HMS Beagle. The journey he undertook led to the development of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, as the Islands offered a plethora of intriguing and helpful resources and observations. This date is important especially from a scientific perspective as it marks the beginning of Darwin's studies on the Galapagos Islands' endemic species that inspired him to research further.

   Although the Galapagos Islands are part of Ecuador, due to Darwin's original discovery, many of the places of interest are actually named after typically English subjects, for instance his fellow explorers or significant English noblemen. In more recent times, the Ecuadorian government have assigned Spanish names to these locations, reclaiming their Islands to the Latin American heritage. An example of this renaming would be with San Cristobal Island: the Spanish naming refers to the patron saint of seafaring St Christopher; whereas the English name was Chatham, relating to William Pitt who was the 1st Earl of Chatham. You can see why the locals of this Ecuadorian cluster of land were keen to rename them - what was Chatham supposed to mean to them?! However there still remains a Darwin Island, home to many fur-seals, marine iguanas, swallow-tailed gulls, sea lions, whales, and marine turtles. Although Darwin was not, by a long way, the first explorer of the Galapagos Islands (the very first European discovery being recorded in 1535), previous voyagers accidently stumbled across them. Darwin remains one of the first people who purposefully went to the Galapagos Islands and investigated the wildlife and patterns of life, thus forming evidence for his evolutionary theory. Indeed, Darwin struggled immensely with the public reception of his theory, but posthumously his work helps to explain the diversity of life and he remains one of the most influential figures in history. Did you know that Darwin read medicine at University of Edinburgh but soon suspended his education to satisfy his interest in natural science? You can visit his statue at the top of the grand staircase at the Natural History Museum in London.