Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently conceived of a theory of evolution via natural selection, and whose work was presented alongside that of Darwin in a paper read to the Linnean Society in 1858, was born #OTD in 1823.
Photographer unknown
Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15997/15997-h/15997-h.htm
You can read "On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type" here, as part III of the joint Darwin-Wallace paper.
https://wallacefund.myspecies.info/content/1858-darwin-wallace-paper
And you should read it, if you haven’t before. It’s pretty important.
But that’s not what I want to tell you about Alfred Russel Wallace.
In 1870, Alfred Russel Wallace won a ￡500 bet (that’s about $50,000 today, give or take) with a flat Earther named John Hampden.
He won the bet by demonstrating the curvature of the Earth along a six mile stretch of the Old Bedford river.
Hampden, publicly humiliated, threatened to kill Wallace and was jailed.
Hampden could not let it go. He wrote to newspapers and distributed pamphlets, telling whoever would listen that Wallace was a liar and swindler.
So Wallace sued Hampden for libel and was awarded another￡600.
Hampden transferred all his assets to his son to avoid paying. Wallace them sued him again in 1872, and Hampden was forced to publicly apologize in several newspapers.
There was a story about it in the New York Times!
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1871/08/10/78770850.html?pageNumber=6
The London papers report that an action, arising out of a scientific wager between JOHN HAMPDEN and ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE, as to whether the earth is "round or flat," had been decided in the Secondary Court, Guildhall. Mr. EDWARD CLARKE, barrister, applied under a writ of inquiry, for damages issued in this cause, consequent upon judgment going by default against JOHN HAMPDEN. The learned counsel, in a...
Robert McNees
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