Today (July 1st 2008) marks an important anniversary – the 150th birthday of the first public announcement on natural selection. On July 1st 1858 Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker read out an essay by Alfred Russell Wallace and two unpublished excerpts from Charles Darwin’s writings at meeting of the Linnean Society of London. One month later these documents were published together in the Society's journal. To mark this seminal event in the history of biology, my friend and colleague George Beccaloni has written an essay that outlines the background to this discovery and some of the controversy that followed. The definitive version of this essay is available from the Wallace Fund website, but George has allowed me to post a copy here.