Word: darwins
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...thought they were doing science--stirred hopes that better days were only a generation or so away. The rise and fall of the theory known as eugenics is in every respect a cautionary tale. The early eugenicists were usually well-meaning and progressive types. They had imbibed their Darwin and decided that the process of natural selection would improve if it were guided by human intelligence. They did not know they were shaping a rationale for atrocities...
...coined the term eugenics, from a Greek stem meaning "good in birth," was a cousin of Charles Darwin's. Englishman Francis Galton (1822-1911) had a substantial inheritance and a Victorian range of scientific curiosity. He dabbled in a number of fields, including geographical exploration, but his passion was mathematics, particularly the infant field of statistics...
Less amusing is the number of intellectuals, businessmen and political leaders who gave eugenics their blessing or fervid support. The list begins with Darwin, who in The Descent of Man praised his cousin Galton and decreed that genius "tends to be inherited." Other champions included the young Winston Churchill, George Bernard Shaw, Alexander Graham Bell, John Maynard Keynes, Theodore Roosevelt and the usually taciturn Calvin Coolidge, who declared during his vice presidency that "Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races...
...harmonica? It could be anyone, of any moniker, who works in obscurity and creates something whose importance is not visible at sea level. The story of the year, 1859: Would that be John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry and the onset of the American Civil War, or Darwin's Origin of Species...
...CHARLES DARWIN Estimated bid: $25,000-$35,000 Final...