IN: Webb was born in Santa Monica, California, on April 2, 1920, son of Samuel Chester Webb and Margaret (nee Smith) Webb. He grew up in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles. His father left home before Webb was born, and Webb never knew him. Webb was raised in the Roman Catholic faith of his mother, who was of Irish and Native American descent.

Shortly after leaving his position at Warner Bros., Webb teamed with Universal Television to begin work on a new Dragnet series. A pilot telefilm, based on the Harvey Glatman serial killings, was produced in 1966 for NBC, with Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday joined by Harry Morgan as Officer Bill Gannon. (Webb had tried to get Ben Alexander to reprise his role as Frank Smith, but he was unable to get Alexander to leave the ABC series Felony Squad.)  The new Dragnet premiered as a midseason replacement series on January 12, 1967, and aired until April 16, 1970. To distinguish it from the original series, the year of production was added to the title (Dragnet 1967, Dragnet 1968, etc.). The revival emphasized crime prevention and outreach to the public. Its attempts to address the contemporary youth-drug culture (such as "The LSD Story" episode, guest-starring Michael Burns as Benjamin John "Blue Boy" Carver, voted 85th-best TV episode of all time by TV Guide and TV Land) have led certain episodes on the topic to achieve cult status due to their strained attempts to be "with-it", such as Joe Friday grilling "Blue Boy" by asking him, "You're pretty high and far out, aren't you? What kind of kick are you on, son?" Don Dubbins, who had acted alongside Webb in The D.I. in 1957, was another featured actor in Mark VII Limited programs beginning in the 1960s.  In 1968, Webb and his production partner R.A. Cinader launched Adam-12 on NBC. A spinoff of Dragnet, Adam-12 starred Martin Milner and Kent McCord as a pair of LAPD beat cops, and followed their escapades while on patrol. Running till 1975, for a total of seven seasons, Adam-12 was Webb's second-longest running television series, with the eight seasons recorded by the original Dragnet being the longest.  Also in 1968, Webb and Johnny Carson performed a sketch on The Tonight Show that has since become known as the "Copper Clapper Caper" sketch. Webb, in character as Joe Friday, was working on the case of a robbery at a school-bell factory. Carson played the owner of the factory and victim of the theft, which consisted of each bell being relieved of its clapper (the device that makes the bell ring). The sketch's dialogue consisted of Webb and Carson discussing the situation in deadpan style and using alliteration and tongue twisters to describe the incident, each word having either a "c" or "cl" sound at the beginning. Both Webb and Carson tried desperately not to lose composure, but both did, near the end of the sketch.
QUESTION: What was Dragnet about?
IN: Charles Robert Darwin,  (; 12 February 1809 - 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors and, in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, overcoming scientific rejection of earlier concepts of transmutation of species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact.

Darwin's views on social and political issues reflected his time and social position. He grew up in a family of Whig reformers who, like his uncle Josiah Wedgwood, supported electoral reform and the emancipation of slaves. Darwin was passionately opposed to slavery, while seeing no problem with the working conditions of English factory workers or servants. His taxidermy lessons in 1826 from the freed slave John Edmonstone, who he long recalled as "a very pleasant and intelligent man", reinforced his belief that black people shared the same feelings, and could be as intelligent as people of other races. He took the same attitude to native people he met on the Beagle voyage. These attitudes were not unusual in Britain in the 1820s, much as it shocked visiting Americans. British society became more racist in mid century, but Darwin remained strongly against slavery, against "ranking the so-called races of man as distinct species", and against ill-treatment of native people. He valued European civilisation and saw colonisation as spreading its benefits, with the sad but inevitable effect that savage peoples who did not become civilised faced extinction. Darwin's theories presented this as natural, and were cited to promote policies that went against his humanitarian principles.  He thought men's eminence over women was the outcome of sexual selection, a view disputed by Antoinette Brown Blackwell in her 1875 book The Sexes Throughout Nature.  Darwin was intrigued by his half-cousin Francis Galton's argument, introduced in 1865, that statistical analysis of heredity showed that moral and mental human traits could be inherited, and principles of animal breeding could apply to humans. In The Descent of Man, Darwin noted that aiding the weak to survive and have families could lose the benefits of natural selection, but cautioned that withholding such aid would endanger the instinct of sympathy, "the noblest part of our nature", and factors such as education could be more important. When Galton suggested that publishing research could encourage intermarriage within a "caste" of "those who are naturally gifted", Darwin foresaw practical difficulties, and thought it "the sole feasible, yet I fear utopian, plan of procedure in improving the human race", preferring to simply publicise the importance of inheritance and leave decisions to individuals. Francis Galton named this field of study "eugenics" in 1883.
QUESTION:
What was interesting about this article?