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Do you realize that this Thursday we begin celebrating “The BrainYear?”

Yes, February 12 will get all the publicity as the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, but the year 1809 is also notable for being The Brain Year – and even more – what I consider one of the most remarkable coincidences of all time – which I will explain.

I happen to think coincidences are always interesting, sometimes remarkable, rarely significant beyond passing attention. Of this one coincidence I have known for some time, and I was hoping to spring it on the world afresh, but then Smithsonian magazine blew my big event by putting it on the cover of their current issue. (Fortunately, I’d guess that few, if any, readers of this blog read that magazine.)

Here’s the coincidence I consider the most startling of all time:

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were both born in 1809. Wait! Not only the same year but the same month. AND, not only the same month but the SAME DAY! Two hundred years ago this Thursday the two men who were arguably the two most monumental changers of history began life within hours of each other – Lincoln in a rude cabin in Kentucky and Darwin thousands of miles away in a wealthy home in England.

So much for one of the most remarkable coincidence ever. You (maybe) heard it first here.

Now for The Brain Year.

In retrospect, historians look back and see the year 1809 as the seedbed of change in civilization – political, intellectual, industrial and scientific. Let me count just a few of lives that started that year (in addition to Lincoln and Darwin): Louis Braille, inventor of Braille for the sightless; Edgar Allan Poe, America’s first internationally-recognized writer; Felix Mendelssohn, German composer; Alfred Lord Tennyson, British poet; Cyrus McCormick, American inventor; Hannibal Hamlin (You never heard of him, did you? He was Lincoln’s first vice-president and would have been U.S. president if Lincoln hadn’t dropped him for Andrew Johnson); Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., American physician and writer; Kit Carson, frontiersman; William Gladstone, four-time British prime minister.

How about a few events, such as: On March 4 James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” succeeded Thomas Jefferson as President and solidified the beginning of political parties in the U.S.; Miami University of Ohio (Have you ever eaten in their 1809 Room?); Robert Fulton patented the steamboat; Napoleon was still rampaging through Europe until his got his comeuppance in Russia; Ecuador declared its independence, the first country to break Spanish dominance of South America, leading to the Monroe Doctrine; Meriwether Lewis, explorer extraordinaire, dies under mysterious circumstances.

Enough already.

Now you’ve learned a lot of things you didn’t think you wanted to learn.

I doubt if the year 2009 will be known as The Brain Year. The way we’re going, we’ll be lucky if civilization is still here in 200 years.

–Vic Jose

Vic Jose :: Feb.09.2009 :: Uncategorized ::

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