info.lifespan.dev/notes/2026/02/01/blue-plaques

Blue Plaques

Walking past a blue plaque was the moment when some of the ideas in Lifespan crystallised a bit. Blue plaques

A plaque like Charles Darwin’s contains this information:

  • Charles Darwin
  • Naturalist
  • lived 1809-1882
  • “this site” (which is on Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT)
  • lived at that place between 1838-1842

…which in Lifespan terms give us…

  • Charles Darwin lived_in Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT –> 1838-1842

Let’s assume we already have a span for Charles Darwin himself, with the 1809-1882 part.

Thanks to the amazing work done by Open Plaques, we can get a lot of data on a lot of plaques. Importing them automatically has been a bit of a challenge, but now we have a growing set of blue plaques here - and the exciting part is that all the people and places in the plaques are spans… that can then grow and expand and be explored.

So we can go to Charles Darwin and go from there…