London, Mar 22 (ANI): Charles Darwin’s life during college days was quite different from what many would expect. He used to spend very little time studying or in lectures, preferring to shoot, ride and collect beetles, suggest newly discovered bills.
Historians have gained new insight into Darwin’s life as a college student after unearthing bills that record personal details of how he spent his money.
According to the bills, the revolutionary scientist happily paid others to carry out menial tasks for him, such as stoking his fire and polishing his shoes.
However, when it came to books, there is very little evidence to support the fact that he invested in textbooks, or that he did much else to further his studies.
The records were found in six previously overlooked college books, and are due to be published online on the Complete Works of Charles Darwin website (darwin-online.org.uk).
Darwin’s time at Cambridge, from 1828 to 1831 is also one for which there is a comparative shortage of information.
In total, Darwin’s college bills amounted to around 637 pounds over the three years, which did not include the 14 pounds he paid for his BA degree in 1831 or the 12 pounds he spent collecting his MA in 1836, following his return from the Beagle voyage.
The bills also show that in addition to the basic college dinner ration of a joint of meat and a glass of beer, he was prepared to spend money on fresh vegetables each day.
“Before this, we didn’t really know very much about Darwin’s daily life at Cambridge at all,” The Guardian quoted Dr John van Wyhe, director of the Darwin website, as saying.
“It had been assumed that there were no significant traces of his time here left to discover, which meant that we were short of information about one of the most formative parts of his life.
“Now, in his 200th anniversary year, we have found a real treasure trove right in the middle of Cambridge,” he said.
“How much he spent on alcohol, for example, or to have his horse stabled, we still don’t know,” added Van Wyhe, a science historian at the University of Cambridge and founder of the website. (ANI)
ROUNDUP: YouTube Symphony earns praise on debut
New York – After 3,000 online auditions, 15 million hits on their YouTube channel and just two days of intensive rehearsal, the 96 musicians who form the YouTube Symphony orchestra made their public debut in a well-reviewed concert at Carnegie Hall.
Playing to a sold out crowd Wednesday night in a venue strewn with computer screens, the performers from 33 countries aired pieces from Bach, Mozart and Brahms, as well as Internet Symphony No. 1, Eroica, written especially for the event by Oscar-winning Chinese composer Tan Dun. The musicians were chosen by an online poll of the 15 million people who viewed their videos.
“We’re meeting a lot of different worlds, the real time world, the online world and the experience of getting acquainted,” said Grammy Award-winning conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, the orchestra’s artistic director, who conducted most of the concert. “It’s been like a summit conference and a scout jamboree, with elements of speed dating.
The New York Times said that the despite the challenges posed by the nature of the project the musicians performed “quite well, actually” but that more rehearsals would be required for greater subtlety. The paper’s music critic also criticized the programme for choosing too many excerpts rather than allowing the orchestra loose on complete works.
But the paper called for the experiment to be made permanent – quoting Kurt Hinterbichler, a physicist at Columbia University who played the double bass in the orchestra and explained that YouTube deserves credit for fielding the musical team rather than “the YouTube International Basketball Team.”
Another appropriate comment came from a tech-savvy Twitter blogger in the audience. Using the short-form comments that have made the site famous, he needed only two words to describe the concert: “really fantastic.” (dpa)