The Smallest Dot on the Map

In 1809, the world's attention was fixed on Napoleon. He was redrawing the borders of Europe, marching armies across Austria, and crowning himself master of nations. Every newspaper, every parliament, every throne room buzzed with his name. No one was paying attention to the nobodies being born that year — a baby named Abraham Lincoln in a one-room Kentucky cabin, Charles Darwin in a modest English home, Alfred Tennyson in a rural rectory.…