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Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was born, and Lamark created a theory of evolution which included the idea that traits could be acquired and then passed along to offspring.
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In 1809 the "Father of Evolution" was born in Shrewsbury, England.
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Charles Darwin graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge with a B.A. degree.
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Charles Darwin's father finally gave permission for him to sail on the Beagle.
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Charles Darwin had his first interview with Fitzroy, Captain of the HMS Beagle, in hopes of becoming the ship's naturalist. Fitzroy very nearly rejected Darwin because of the shape of his nose
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Ernst Haeckel was a zoologist whose work on evolution served to inspire some of the racist theories of the Nazis.
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The HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, finally reaches Galapagos Islands.
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Charles Darwin receives a monograph and decides to publish his findings earlier than intended.
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Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was first published.
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Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce engaged in their famous debate on Darwin's theory of evolution
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John T. Scopes was born. Scopes became famous in a trial which challenged Tennessee's law against teaching evolution.
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Austin Peay signed a law prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools. Later that year John Scopes would violate the law, leading to the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial.
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Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Humani Generis, containing ideas that threatened the Roman Catholic faith but stated, evolution did not necessarily conflict with Christianity.
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The Supreme Court found that Arkansas' law prohibiting the teaching of evolution was unconstitutional because the motivation was based on a literal reading of Genesis, not science.
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A federal judge found that Arkansas' "balanced treatment" law mandating equal treatment of creation science with evolution was unconstitutional.