Shrewsbury festival for its own 'Great Briton' Shrewsbury, the place of Charles Darwin's birth, is planning a festival to mark the achievements of a great thinker and naturalist whose work has done so much to shape the way we see the world around us.

Great Britons homepage Your chance to vote for who you think is the greatest Briton of all time.

Website's vast insight into county past Shropshire's famous son Charles Darwin has lent his name to an innovative new website which brings huge amounts of information about life and society in the 18th and 19th centuries within easy reach of almost everyone.

Just a few quick dips into the thousands of facts to be found in Darwin Country ...

In 1903 there were 125 cars in Shropshire.

In 1894, the 15th century spire of St Mary's Church, Shrewsbury, fell through the roof during a storm. Samuel Butler reports the vicar claimed it was thrown down by God because some Shrewsbury people were planning a memorial to Charles Darwin.

Benjamin Disraeli became MP for Shrewsbury in 1841. The town's population was 18,285 and the population of Shropshire was 225,820.

The owner of the Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury began a regular coach service between London and Holyhead in 1790s.

Read the rules of posting

For me Darwin was one of the most benighted people who ever lived. He was not a scientist on a par with Newton, Kepler, Faraday, Clerk Maxwell.

His ideas about origins were not new; the Greeks believed life crawled out of the slime. Evolution does not begin to explain how life began; we still do not even know, e.g. how the first protein was formed because this requires a protein (an enzyme) in the first place.

Natural selection with mutations only generate variations within a kind, e.g. the dog or cat families; there is no experimental proof that these mechanisms can ever change one kind of animal into another, e.g. a fish into a dog.

The reason is that such changes require huge inputs of new information into the genome and there is no natural explanation of the origin of such information.

Far from advancing our understanding, Darwin's evolution has held it back, e.g. the false notion of "vestigial organs" still taught in our schools and universities.

The thymus was regarded as one such until it was discovered to be absolutely vital for the development of our immune system. And so one could go on .... I would rather choose a real scientist any day than Darwin.

Peter Gurney
Wolverhampton

"A prophet is never recognised in his own land" is a saying that could have been penned about Charles Darwin.

The simple fact is that no one could look at the world the same way after Darwin. Even if you disagree with him on religious grounds, his theories ask profound questions of your faith.

He did not create his ideas in a vacuum but he was the man who crystalised the radical thinking of his day. A man who dared to think outside the loop and an inspiration to us all.

Charles Darwin - A truly Great Briton

Jon King
Shrewsbury

Bernard was a journalist who spent much of his time in Shropshire and Mid Wales. He was a prolific writer and his work is collected throughout the world.

Vote Darwin, but BERNARD, not Charles.

Colin Young
Shrewsbury

Mary obviously doesn't know what she's talking about. Darwin is still taught in schools because he is just as relevant today. I'll certainly be voting for him. One person who doesn't belong on the list is Princess Diana.

Jack Hall
Wem