1844

Victoria, in the seventh year of her reign as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, turned 25 – on May 24, of course.

At his home in Kent, Charles Darwin was writing a draft essay on his theory of evolution by natural selection, which he had not yet revealed to anyone.

Across the ocean, Abraham Lincoln, a successful lawyer with a young family, who had been born on the same day in 1809 as Darwin, bought a house in Springfield, Illinois.

To the east, on the other side of the Great Lakes, a promising young lawyer, John A. Macdonald, was elected to represent the town of Kingston in the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Canada.

In the Red River Settlement, near modern-day Winnipeg, Louis Riel was born.

In Prussia, near Leipzig, Friedrich Nietzsche was born.

Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, published Rambles in Germany and Italy, a two-volume work of travel writing.

In Paris, a radical young journalist named Karl Marx was writing what became known as his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. “The sun is the object of the plant – ”, he wrote, “an indispensable object to it, confirming its life – just as the plant is an object for the sun, being an expression of the life-awakening power of the sun, of the sun’s objective essential power.”

J. M. W. Turner’s paintings were filled with the sun’s light. His 1844 work Rain, Steam, and Speed – The Great Western Railway celebrates the fusion of technology and nature, and the headlong rush into the future.