Today in History, November 24th
On November 24, 1859, Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published. Plus D.B. Cooper's leap, the Lucy fossil, and more.
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November 24 is best known as the day Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was published in 1859. It is also the day the hijacker known as D.B. Cooper jumped from a jetliner with a bag of ransom money in 1971, and the day scientists found the “Lucy” fossil in Ethiopia in 1974.
The big story: Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species (1859)
Charles Darwin had been quietly building his case for years. Much of his evidence came from a five-year survey voyage aboard HMS Beagle in the 1830s, including stops in the Galápagos Islands. The push to publish came in 1858, when the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace independently reached nearly the same theory, and the two men’s work was presented together to the Linnean Society of London. Darwin’s full book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, appeared in England the following year and sold out right away. Its argument was simple to state and hard to unsee: living things vary, and those whose traits suit their surroundings tend to leave more offspring, so species change over long stretches of time. Many scientists accepted the theory fairly quickly. Many religious critics did not, and the debate grew louder when Darwin applied the idea to humans in The Descent of Man in 1871. Modern biology still rests on the foundation he laid.
More events on November 24
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1642 | Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sailed along the southern coast of the island later named Tasmania, the first known European sighting of it. |
| 1832 | A South Carolina convention adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring two federal tariffs void in the state and setting off the nullification crisis. |
| 1863 | Union troops won the Battle of Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga, Tennessee, the clash nicknamed the “Battle Above the Clouds.” |
| 1874 | Joseph Glidden patented the first commercially successful barbed wire, a product that would transform ranching and farming in the American West. |
| 1932 | The FBI’s crime laboratory opened for business, bringing scientific evidence analysis to federal investigations. |
| 1947 | The “Hollywood Ten” were cited for contempt of Congress after refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. |
| 1963 | Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy, in Dallas, two days after the assassination. |
| 1971 | A hijacker known as D.B. Cooper seized a plane after takeoff from Portland, Oregon, then parachuted out with the ransom. He was never identified or caught. |
| 1974 | Donald Johanson and Tom Gray found the 3.2-million-year-old “Lucy” skeleton at Hadar, Ethiopia. |
| 2017 | An attack on a mosque in Egypt’s northern Sinai killed 305 people, one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Egypt’s modern history. |
Born on November 24
- 1784: Zachary Taylor, 12th president of the United States.
- 1849: Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of Little Lord Fauntleroy, born in Manchester, England.
- 1864: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter and poster artist.
- 1925: William F. Buckley Jr., American editor, author, and conservative commentator.
Keep reading
Sources
- “Origin of Species” is published, History.com
- On This Day: November 24, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- This Day in History: November 24, History.com
- “Lucy” fossils discovered, History.com
- Terrorists attack mosque in Sinai, Egypt, History.com
- The Battles for Chattanooga, National Park Service
- Frances Hodgson Burnett, Encyclopaedia Britannica
