Darwin Day site offers free registration and display of all Darwin Day events. The Perth Mint, Australia will launch a 2009 dated commemorative 1 ounce silver legal tender coin depicting Darwin, young and old; HMS Beagle; and Darwin's signature. Some celebrants also combine Darwin Day with a celebration of Abraham Lincoln, who was also born on 12 February 1809. Still others like to celebrate the many noted individuals that influenced or were influenced by Darwin's work, such as Thomas H. Huxley, Charles Lyell, Alfred Russel Wallace, Carl Sagan, and Ernst Mayr. Support for Darwin Day comes from both secular and religious organisations.
Charles Darwin two prominent abolitionists: Erasmus Darwin on his father's side, and Josiah Wedgwood on his mother's side. Both families were largely Unitarian, though the Wedgwoods were adopting Anglicanism. Robert Darwin, himself quietly a freethinker, had baby Charles baptised in November 1809 in the Anglican St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, but Charles and his siblings attended the Unitarian chapel with their mother. The eight-year-old Charles already had a taste for natural history and collecting when he joined the day school run by its preacher in 1817. That July, his mother died. From September 1818, he joined his older brother Erasmus attending the nearby