On This Day - Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was born in 1809.

He didn't in fact coin the phrase "survival of the fittest". Herbert Spencer - see en.wikipedia.org an English philosopher had already used it in his works on evolutionary philosophy.

Charles Darwin said: “The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.”

Spencer himself wrote: "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life."