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Joseph Hooker

2 stories mention Joseph Hooker on DeadlyCurious.

The Footnote June 27, 2026 · Oxford University Museum

The Oxford Meeting on 30 June 1860 Where the Bishop Asked if Thomas Huxley Was Descended From an Ape on His Grandfather's or Grandmother's Side

At the British Association meeting in Oxford on 30 June 1860, seven months after Darwin's *Origin of Species*, the Bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce asked T. H. Huxley whether he claimed descent from apes on his grandfather's or grandmother's side. Huxley reportedly replied that he would rather be descended from an ape than from a bishop who used his great abilities to obscure the truth. The exchange did not happen exactly as the legend records.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Ternate, Maluku

The 35-Year-Old British Specimen Collector Who Independently Discovered Natural Selection While Lying in a Fever in the Spice Islands in February 1858

Alfred Russel Wallace, a self-funded specimen-collecting naturalist, was lying in a malarial fever on the island of Ternate in the eastern Dutch East Indies in February 1858 when he worked out the theory of natural selection. He wrote it up in two days and posted the manuscript to Charles Darwin. Darwin had been refining the same theory privately for twenty years. The two papers were read together at the Linnean Society on 1 July 1858.

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