Also, Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday.
http://darwinanniversary.ucsd.edu/
February 12, 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of the birthdays of two historic figures whose ideas and actions shaped the modern world—Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. For scientists, Darwin’s 200th birthday anniversary is an opportunity to reflect on how far knowledge about our natural world has come since the publication of On the Origin of Species and to examine the future direction of biology and other disciplines. For historians and political scientists, the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday has taken on new meaning with the election of our nation’s first African American president.