Today is the 150th anniversary of the first publication of On the Origin of Species.

Why not celebrate by checking out Nature’s Darwin special? This week is our third Darwin celebrating issue, focusing on biodiversity.

If you want more, here’s more…

The BBC notes that a first edition of On the Origin is being auctioned off today after its discovery in a toilet. It was expected to reach around £60,000 but actually sold for £103,250 according to Christie’s.

The Times notes that a search of Britain is being organised for a missing Darwin notebook. “Temptingly pocket-sized, it was probably stolen in the late 1970s from the study table where he worked at Down House, near Biggin Hill in Kent, where he wrote Origin and all his later major works,” adds the Guardian.

In the Independent, Steve Connor writes about ‘Darwin’s true heir’: “His name is Edward O. Wilson”. Meanwhile, NPR declares that On the Origin, “may be more controversial today than when it first appeared”.

Greg Ladin has a thoughtful blog about the book, and says, “The Origin of Species was itself a bit like a Noachian flood in that as we look back we often imagine a pre-Origin dark ages of theological misunderstandings washed away by the flood of The Origin which gets it all right. And this is true to some extent from a purely scientific point of view, but in the broader context of the history of good ideas and the still broader context of the history of all ideas (good or bad) it simply isn’t close.”

And finally, this seems like a good occasion to resurrect our word cloud picture of On the Origin, reproduced right for your pleasure.