The Cambridge University Library found a sample of seaweed collected by Charles Darwin from his famous "pick up random stuff" expedition on the Beagle. As the article states:
"'I was going through a box labelled in 1950 ‘to be sorted,' said Chief Technician Christine Bartram.
'Inside it, wrapped in a newspaper from 1828, I found fungi and seaweed collected by Charles Darwin on the Beagle Voyage in South America during 1832 and 1833."
What is more exciting, finding 190 year old plant bits or a 190 year old coupon for three farthings off a head-hole drilling? I find this story fascinating in that when a archivist normally finds fungus in a collection, the solution is a healthy dose of Lysol, but not when it is famous person fungus. Oh, no. That's the good fungus. That's the stuff we keep, yeah buddy.
And yeah, I know that the guy kinda made a big deal in the world of fungus and evolutionary science. Big whoop. This is almost equivalent to finding Hemingway's pencil shavings or Madam Curie's radon sample. An oddity and kinda cool in context, but the kind of materials that they throw out at the end of Storage Wars.
Cambridge librarian finds forgotten fungus Charles Darwin brought back on the ... - Daily Mail