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Apr 10, 2018
Omar Sharif’s 86th Birthday
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Actor Omar Sharif made his indelible mark on Hollywood cinema without uttering a word. Playing the Arab warrior Sherif Ali in the 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia, Sharif first appears as a tiny dot on the desert horizon, growing larger as his camel gallops into the frame with Peter O’Toole.
From that point on, he continued on an incredible journey that made his indelible mark on Cinema in the arab world and beyond.
Born Michel Demitri Shalhoub in Alexandria, Egypt on this day in 1932, Sharif worked for his father’s lumber company before pursuing a movie career. Taking the name Omar El-Sharif, he starred in Egyptian hits including his first film in 1954, Struggle in the Valley [also known as The Blazing Sun, in which he co-starred with his future wife, actress Faten Hamama], A Rumor of Love [1960], and There is a Man in Our House [1961].
With Lawrence of Arabia [1962], Sharif expanded his orbit from Egyptian matinee idol to international heartthrob. During the 1960s, the charismatic, multilingual actor played, among other roles, a king of Armenia in The Fall of the Roman Empire [1964], a Mongol leader in Genghis Khan [1965], a Russian doctor in Doctor Zhivago [1965]—perhaps his most acclaimed part—and a big-time gambler in the box-office sensation Funny Girl [1968].
Sharif racked up two Golden Globes and an Oscar nomination for Lawrence of Arabia. He also received numerous other awards including a César for the 2003 film, Monsieur Ibrahim, and a UNESCO Einstein medal in 2005, acknowledging his contributions to cultural diversity.
While acting was his main occupation, Sharif was also an internationally renowned bridge player, writing a syndicated column on the topic for the Chicago Tribune.
Today’s animated Doodle shows Sharif in true dashing form.
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April 14, 2005
Leonardo da Vinci's 553rd Birthday
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ju...2Wz-lhX6g=s660
Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he also became known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and paleontology. Leonardo's genius epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works compose a contribution to later generations of artists matched only by that of his younger contemporary, Michelangelo.
Leonardo is among the greatest painters in the history of art and is often credited as the founder of the High Renaissance. Despite having many lost works and less than 25 attributed major works—including numerous unfinished works—he created some of the most influential paintings in Western art. His magnum opus, the Mona Lisa, is his best known work and often regarded as the world's most famous painting. The Last Supper is the most reproduced religious painting of all time and his Vitruvian Man drawing is also regarded as a cultural icon. In 2017, Salvator Mundi, attributed in whole or part to Leonardo, was sold at auction for US$450.3 million, setting a new record for most expensive painting ever sold at public auction.
Revered for his technological ingenuity, he conceptualized flying machines, a type of armored fighting vehicle, concentrated solar power, an adding machine, and the double hull. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, as the modern scientific approaches to metallurgy and engineering were only in their infancy during the Renaissance. Some of his smaller inventions, however, entered the world of manufacturing unheralded, such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire. He made substantial discoveries in anatomy, civil engineering, geology, optics, tribology, and hydrodynamics, but he did not publish his findings and they had little to no direct influence on subsequent science.
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Jun 8, 2005
Frank Lloyd Wright's 138th Birthday
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Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. He designed more than 1,000 structures over a creative period of 70 years. Wright believed in designing in harmony with humanity and the environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture. This philosophy was exemplified in Fallingwater [1935], which has been called "the best all-time work of American architecture". Wright played a key role in the architectural movements of the twentieth century, influencing architects worldwide through his works and hundreds of apprentices in his Taliesin Fellowship.
Wright was the pioneer of what came to be called the Prairie School movement of architecture and also developed the concept of the Usonian home in Broadacre City, his vision for urban planning in the United States. He also designed original and innovative offices, churches, schools, skyscrapers, hotels, museums, and other commercial projects. Wright-designed interior elements [including leaded glass windows, floors, furniture and even tableware] were integrated into these structures. He wrote several books and numerous articles and was a popular lecturer in the United States and in Europe.
Wright was recognized in 1991 by the American Institute of Architects as "the greatest American architect of all time". In 2019, a selection of his work became a listed World Heritage Site as The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Raised in rural Wisconsin, Wright studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin and then apprenticed in Chicago, first with Joseph Lyman Silsbee [1887] and then with Louis Sullivan [1888]. He opened his own successful Chicago practice in 1893 and established a studio in his Oak Park, Illinois home in 1898. His personal life made headlines: leaving his first wife, Catherine Tobin, for Mamah Cheney in 1909; the murders at his Taliesin estate by a staff member in 1914; his tempestuous marriage with second wife Miriam Noel in 1923; and his relationship with Olgivanna Lazović, whom he married in 1928.
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Jan 4, 2006
Louis Braille's 107th Birthday
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Louis Braille was a French educator and inventor of a system of reading and writing for use by the blind or visually impaired. His system remains virtually unchanged to this day, and is known worldwide simply as braille.
Braille was blinded at the age of three in one eye as a result of an accident with a stitching awl in his father's harness making shop. Consequently, an infection set in and spread to both eyes, resulting in total blindness. At that time there were not many resources in place for the blind but nevertheless, he excelled in his education and received a scholarship to France's Royal Institute for Blind Youth. While still a student there, he began developing a system of tactile code that could allow blind people to read and write quickly and efficiently. Inspired by the military cryptography of Charles Barbier, Braille constructed a new method built specifically for the needs of the blind. He presented his work to his peers for the first time in 1824.
In adulthood, Louis Braille served as a professor at the Institute and had an avocation as a musician, but he largely spent the remainder of his life refining and extending his system. It went unused by most educators for many years after his death, but posterity has recognized braille as a revolutionary invention, and it has been adapted for use in languages worldwide.
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Feb 10, 2006
2006 Torino Olympic Games - Opening Ceremony
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The 2006 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XX Olympic Winter Games and commonly known as Torino 2006 or Turin 2006, was a winter multi-sport event held from 10 to 26 February 2006 in Turin, Piedmont, Italy.
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Mar 1, 2013
Ryunosuke Akutagawa's 121st Birthday
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Ryūnosuke Akutagawawas a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story", and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He committed suicide at the age of 35 through an overdose of barbital.
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March 1, 2012
Quinquela Martín's 122nd Birthday
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Benito Quinquela Martín was an Argentine painter. Quinquela Martín is considered the port painter-par-excellence and one of the most popular Argentine painters. His paintings of port scenes show the activity, vigor and roughness of the daily life in the port of La Boca.
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Mar 14, 2012
Akira Yoshizawa's 101st Birthday
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We’re excited to have Robert J. Lang here to talk about today’s doodle in honor of Akira Yoshizawa. Lang is considered one of the world’s masters of the art of origami. His design techniques are used by origami artists around the world, and he lectures widely on the connections between origami art, science, mathematics and technology. - Ed.
Akira Yoshizawa is widely regarded as the father of the modern origami art form. Over the course of his life, he created tens of thousands of origami works and pioneered many of the artistic techniques used by modern-day origami artists, most notably the technique of wet-folding, which allowed the use of thick papers and created soft curves, gentle shapes and rounded, organic forms. He also developed a notation for origami that has now been the standard for origami instruction for more than 50 years.
Yoshizawa took up Japan's traditional folk art of origami in his 20s, and eventually left his job at a factory to focus full-time on his origami creations. His work came to the attention of the west in 1955, after an exhibition of his works in Amsterdam, and rapidly spread around the world. In his last decades, he received worldwide renown and invitations from all over, culminating in his award in 1983 of the Order of the Rising Sun.
I had the great fortune to meet Yoshizawa several times. In 1988, he came to New York to visit The Friends of the Origami Center of America, and spoke at a panel discussion I attended. There, he addressed a wide range of topics: one's mental attitude, the importance of character, of natural qualities, of having one's "spirit within [the artwork's] folds." Although he was the consummate artist, his work and approach was infused with the mathematical and geometric underpinnings of origami as well as a deep aesthetic sense:
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Mar 17, 2012
St. Patrick's Day 2012
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A holiday celebrated by people all over the world, St. Patrick's Day finds its origins deep in Irish history. As we celebrate Ireland's national day every year, I wanted to find a fresh way to draw this doodle-- and in my research I found "what's old is new." The Book of Kells, considered one of Ireland's greatest treasures, is equally important to both Irish and art history. The pages of this illuminated manuscript has inspired centuries of artists from 800 AD right into the digital age. Capturing the intense intricacy from the Chi Rho proved no small undertaking-- despite having electricity and computers to help me.
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March 21, 2018
Ustad Bismillah Khan’s 102nd Birthday
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Today we celebrate the birthday of Ustad Bismillah Khan, shehnai maestro and one of India’s most beloved musicians.
Born in Bhirung Raut Ki Gali, Bihar to a family of court musicians, it is said that his grandfather exclaimed “Bismillah!” upon seeing his grandson, and the name stuck. In subsequent years, as his mastery over the shenai grew, the public added the honorific, Ustad [master] to his name.
Both India’s declaration of independence from the ramparts of the Red Fort in 1947 and the creation of the Indian republic three years later in 1950 were heralded by Ustad Bismillah Khan’s shehnai. To this day, Republic Day celebrations are broadcast to the opening notes of his music.
Though he started playing in public at the age of 14, Ustad ji’s performance at the All India Music Conference at Kolkata in 1937 became a defining moment in his career. Three decades later, when he performed at the Edinburgh Music Festival, the shehnai acquired a global audience, and in the minds of millions, became synonymous with its player.
Ustad ji was famously devoted to his art and often referred to his shehnai as his begum [wife]. He is one of the few musicians to receive the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honor in addition to all four Padma awards. Despite the fame, Ustad Bismillah Khan remained a simple man, living his whole life in Varanasi and dreaming of a world unified by music.
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Mar 18, 2018
Erich Ohser's 115th Birthday
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Cartoonist Erich Ohser’s mighty pen was not only his sword, but his shield. Born on this day in Vogtland, Germany, in 1903, Ohser was raised in the industrial town of Plauen. He attended art school at Leipzig’s esteemed Academy of Graphic Arts and Book Trade before finding his voice as a cartoonist and book illustrator in Weimar Republic–era Berlin.
The artist’s work blossomed through his bond with writer Erich Kästner and journalist Erich Knauf, who shared his political ideology and modern sense of aesthetics. Ohser’s impassioned cartoons and caricatures, which appeared in Knauf’s articles and other popular publications, became his vehicle for expressing his antipathy towards the National Socialists. As making such declarations became increasingly dangerous, Ohser found refuge in drawing the lighthearted, and highly successful, comic strip Vater und Sohn [Father and Son].
From 1934 through 1937, Vater und Sohn captivated readers of the weekly news magazine Berliner Illustrirte Zeitungwith its irreverent wit, scratchy pen strokes, and playful antics. Plucking a page from his past, Ohser signed it with a pseudonym that stuck: E.O. Plauen.
Today’s Doodle, rendered by German cartoonist Nadine Redlich, captures the spirit of Ohser’s beloved strip, featuring a pot-bellied father and his playful son, with the artist’s hand within the frame.
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Mar 17, 2018
St. Patrick's Day 2018
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In today’s Doodle, Irish artist Ross Stewart celebrates his homeland’s rich history and heritage.
Standing in for the Google “L” is a tall stone that pays homage to Ireland’s earliest form of writing: ogham. The edge is marked with a series of ancient carvings, each group representing a letter of the ogham alphabet. See if you can read what it says [[hint: it goes left to right, bottom to top!).
Meanwhile, a determined stonemason is hard at work against a backdrop of peaceful greens and blues. In the foreground, a sprinkling of native wildflowers rounds out Stewart’s ode to the isle’s vast, natural beauty – sheepish onlooker included.
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Mar 6, 2018
Gabriel García Márquez’s 91st Birthday
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Deep in the Amazonian jungle, through the lush green canopy and multi-hued vibrance of the hot and humid rainforest, look carefully and you might catch a glimpse of a city of mirrors; a city separated from the world by an expanse of water and yet reflecting everything in and about it; a city that is home to the Buendia family and the site of strange otherworldly happenings. Here, little fish made of pure gold dazzle the eye; large yellow butterflies flit through the flowers; a train chugs along once in a blue moon; and the only visitors are the all-knowing, mysterious gypsies who come bearing strange tales.
Depicted in today's Doodle is this magical city of Macondo, brought to life by the Colombian author, journalist, and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez [affectionately known as Gabo throughout Latin America] in his book, One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Born in Aracataca, Colombia, Gabo is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. In his long literary career, he penned over 25 books, transporting readers into a world of magical realism where they find themselves in the lush, humid tropics — moldering into solitude or being slowly consumed by the throes of passion.
Gabo’s keen sense of political activism and courage also allowed him to author a number of non-fictional works that eloquently document the times that he lived in, News of a Kidnapping being among the most famous of these.
For all this and more, we celebrate the 91st birthday of a cultural icon whose star continues to shine brightly over the literary and journalistic worlds of Latin America and beyond.
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Oct 30, 2013
Agustin Lara's 113th Birthday
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Agustín Lara, was a Mexican composer and interpreter of songs and boleros. He is recognized as one of the most popular songwriters of his era. His work was widely appreciated not only in Mexico but also in Central and South America, the Caribbean and Spain. After his death, he has also been recognized in the United States, Italy and Japan.
Outside the Spanish speaking world, his most famous songs are Granada, Solamente Una Vez [You Belong to My Heart] and Piensa en mí, which have both been recorded by numerous international singers, including Enrico Caruso, Mario Lanza and Jose Carreras.
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Oct 28, 2013
Edith Head's 116th Birthday
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"You can have anything you want in life if you dress for it." -- Edith Head
Edith Head was an American costume designer during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Throughout the course of her incredibly prolific career, she won eight Academy Awards -- more than any other woman -- and designed some of the most iconic dresses of the 20th century.
When the opportunity arose for us to celebrate Miss Edith's birthday, I snatched it up. It seemed like a dream doodle for me -- it perfectly combined my interests in clothing design and classic Hollywood cinema and also provided the ultimate test for my amateurish forays into fashion illustration [i.e. drawing my own outfits from time to time]!
For this doodle, I wanted to depict Edith standing tall and strong amongst a gallery of six of her drawings, which were chosen based on how iconic they were and how well they fit in with the colors of the Google logo. Recreating her drawings was great fun and incredibly inspiring.
Edith's costume designs were worn by countless celebrities and seen by millions of movie-watchers, but she herself stayed relatively behind-the-scenes. This strange balance of high-profile artwork with personal anonymity shares some interesting parallels to our work as Google Doodlers, so I am happy to have been able to pay tribute to a kindred spirit.
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Oct 26, 2013
Austria National Day 2013
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October 26 has been the date of Austria's National Day since 1965. Ten years earlier, the country had declared its permanent neutrality, which has since become one of the fundamental values of Austrian foreign policy. One day before the declaration, on October 25, 1955, the last foreign troops left the country, which had been occupied by the four allied powers [Soviet Union, United States, Great Britain and France] since the end of World War II.
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Oct 22, 2013
216th Anniversary of the First Parachute Jump
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXAGm2fSG0
The first parachute jump in history was made by André-Jacques Garnerin, the inventor of the parachute, on 22 October 1797. Garnerin tested his contraption by leaping from a hydrogen balloon 3,200 feet [980 m] above Paris. Garnerin's parachute bore little resemblance to today's parachutes, however, as it was not packed into any sort of container and did not feature a ripcord. The first intentional free-fall jump with a ripcord-operated deployment was not made until over a century later by Leslie Irvin in 1919. While Georgia Broadwick made an earlier free-fall in 1914 when her static line became entangled with her jump aircraft's tail assembly, her free-fall descent was not planned. Broadwick cut her static line and deployed her parachute manually, only as a means of freeing herself from the aircraft to which she had become entangled.
The military developed parachuting as a way to save aircrew from emergencies aboard balloons and aircraft in flight, and later, as a way of delivering soldiers to the battlefield. Competitions date back to the 1930s, and it became an international sport in 1952
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Oct 21, 2013
Celia Cruz's 88th Birthday
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Úrsula Hilaria Celia de la Caridad Cruz Alfonso, known as Celia Cruz, was a Cuban singer and one of the most popular Latin artists of the 20th century. Cruz rose to fame in Cuba during the 1950s as a singer of guarachas, earning the nickname "La Guarachera de Cuba". In the following decades, she became known internationally as the "Queen of Salsa" or "The Queen of Latin Music" due to her contributions to Latin music in the United States.
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Oct 19, 2013
Vinicius de Moraes's 100th Birthday
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Marcus Vinícius da Cruz e Mello Moraes, also known as Vinícius de Moraes, was a Brazilian poet, lyricist, essayist, and playwright. Along with frequent collaborator Antônio Carlos Jobim, his lyrics and compositions were part of the birth of bossa nova music. He recorded several albums and also served as a diplomat.
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September 16, 2020
Mexico Independence Day 2020
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Today’s Doodle,illustrated by Xalapa, Mexico-based guest artist Ina Hristova, celebrates Mexico’s Independence Day. On this day in 1810, Mexico’s decade-long struggle for independence from Spanish rule began, and the country’s sovereignty was officially recognized by Spain on August 24, 1821.
Depicted in today’s Doodle is a colorful and eclectic collection of images that represent traditional Independence Day festivities. These illustrations pay homage to an iconic Mexican folk embroidery style developed in the 1960s by the Indigenous Otomí people of Tenango de Doria in central Mexico. The shape of the Doodle artwork is inspired by the central Mexican folk sculptures called “Árboles de la Vida” [“Trees of Life”].
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October 19, 2017
S. Chandrasekhar’s 107th Birthday
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“Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.” Thanks to Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, we know! Today marks the 107th birthday of the first astrophysicist to win a Nobel Prize for his theory on the evolution of stars.
A child prodigy, Chandra published his first paper and developed his theory of star evolution before turning 20. By age 34, he was elected to the Royal Society of London, and soon after, became a distinguished service professor of physics.
The Indian-American physicist’s honors are astronomical, including the National Medal of Science, the Draper Medal of the US National Academy of Science, and the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. Though originally met with skepticism in the 1930s, Chandra’s theories and equations won the Nobel Prize in Physics 50 years later.
Today’s Doodle illustrates one of the most important of all of S. Chandrasekhar's contributions to our understanding of stars and their evolution: The Chandrasekhar limit. The limit explains that when a star’s mass is lighter than 1.4 times that of the sun, it eventually collapses into a denser stage called a “white dwarf.” When heavier than 1.4, a white dwarf can continue to collapse and condense, evolving into a black hole or a supernova explosion.
Today we honor the original starman whose universal theories propel current space research and modern astronomy on their ambitious missions.
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Oct 15, 2013
Friedrich Nietzsche's 169th Birthday
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Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, writer, and philologist whose work has exerted a profound influence on modern intellectual history. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy.
His body of work touched a wide range of topics, including art, philology, history, religion, tragedy, culture, and science, and drew inspiration from figures such as Socrates, Zoroaster, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Wagner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
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October 9, 2015
Uganda National Day 2015
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Yellow, for the sunlight of Africa. Red, for the blood of African brotherhood. And black, for all the peoples of the continent. These colors, plus a forward-looking crane, make up the flag of Uganda, whose national day we commemorate today. Created by the country’s Minister of Justice, the colorful shades of Uganda first flew 53 years ago, when the country became independent.
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Oct 8, 2013
William John Swainson's 224th Birthday
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William John Swainson, was an English ornithologist, malacologist, conchologist, entomologist and artist.
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October 1, 2019
Celebrating Dr. Herbert Kleber
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“Of course I’m an optimist,” psychiatrist Dr. Herbert Kleber once remarked. “How else do I work with addicts for 40 years?” Today’s Doodle celebrates Dr. Kleber—born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 19th, 1934, and hailed for his pioneering work in addiction treatment—on the 23rd anniversary of his election to the prestigious National Academy of Medicine.
Volunteering for the United States Public Health Service in 1964, Dr. Kleber was assigned to a prison hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, where thousands of inmates were being treated for addiction. Noticing that the vast majority of patients would relapse shortly after release, he began to develop a new approach.
Describing his method as “evidence-based treatment,” Dr. Kleber viewed addiction as a medical condition as opposed to a moral failure. Rather than punishing or shaming patients, as many of his predecessors in the field had done, Dr. Kleber stressed the importance of research, helping to keep many patients on the road to recovery and avoid relapse through the careful use of medication and therapeutic communities.
Dr. Kleber’s success attracted the attention of President George H.W. Bush, who appointed him Deputy Director for Demand Reduction at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. As co-founder of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Dr. Kleber was a leader in reframing the field of substance abuse research and treatment as a medical discipline.
At the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, he and his then-wife Dr. Marian W. Fischman established America’s leading research program on substance abuse. During his 50-year career, Dr. Kleber authored hundreds of articles, wrote important books, and mentored numerous other medical professionals in the field of addiction treatment. A self-described “perpetual optimist,” Dr. Kleber changed the landscape of addiction treatment, allowing patients to be diagnosed and treated rather than shamed—and saving countless lives in the process.
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October 1, 2013
Nigeria Independence Day 2013
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Independence Day is an official national holiday in Nigeria, celebrated on the first of October. It marks Nigeria's proclamation of independence from British rule on 1 October 1960.
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November 20, 2019
Maude ‘Lores’ Bonney’s 122nd Birthday
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Today’s Doodle celebrates Australian aviator Maude Rose ‘Lores’ Bonney, who was the first woman to fly solo from Australia to England. A pioneer for women in aviation, she completed the 1933 journey in 157 hours of flight time, surviving a groundbreaking voyage fraught with peril as she flew through heavy storms, survived two crashes, and had an encounter with a herd of water buffalo.
A flight with her husband’s cousin in 1928 sparked her desire to become a pilot. By 1931, Lores had dedicated herself to flying, embarking on her first solo flight in a Gipsy Moth biplane named My Little Ship. A record-breaking first flight, it took Lores nearly 15 hours to fly south from Brisbane, Queensland, to meet her father for dinner in Wangaratta, Victoria.
Lores continued to push the boundaries for aviators with each successive flight, and in 1937, Lores became the first person to fly solo from Australia to her birthplace of South Africa.
With her honorary doctorate from Griffith University, confirmation as a Member of the Order of the British Empire [MBE] and a Member of the Order of Australia [AM], as well as a Queensland electoral district named after her, Lores’ achievements serve to inspire pilots of the future. Unlike Lores, however, today’s pilots have access to a radio and won’t have to do their own maintenance to get to their destination.
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Nov 19, 2019
200th Anniversary of Museo del Prado
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Today’s Doodle celebrates the 200th anniversary of Madrid’s Museo del Prado. Opened on this day in 1819, the museum is home to thousands of Spanish paintings from the 12th century to the 20th century, including masterpieces by El Greco, Francisco Goya, Diego Velázquez, amongst other European masters.
Designed in 1785 by architect Juan de Villanueva, the building was repurposed by King Ferdinand VII and Queen Maria Isabel de Braganza from a center for the natural sciences to a public gallery in 1819. Originally called the Royal Museum, it was later named Museo Nacional del Prado. With a collection of over 5,000 pieces, the museum pursued an expansion project that increased public access and reduced crowding in the main building.
The nearby Jerónimos Cloister was restored and incorporated to create the Museo del Prado Campus, allowing the museum to showcase the masterpieces of a new era. The Bicentenary exhibit, “A Place of Memory,” pays homage to the museum’s history through some of its darkest periods and offers a glimpse into how the museum has transformed into the institution it is today.
The museum is looking to the future on its 200th anniversary, taking time to ensure that diversity is embraced at the dawn of its third century. Throughout the year, the collection exhibited artists from Latin America such as Matrimonios de Martín de Loyola con Beatriz Ñusta y de Juan de Borja con Lorenza Ñusta de Loyola, an extraordinary example of the viceregal painting, coming from the Pedro de Osma Museum in Lima, Peru, and women in A Tale of Two Women Painters: Sofonisba Anguissola and Lavinia Fontana and Twelve Photographers. Guests should be able to see most of the museum in a couple of hours, but they might lose track of time trying to unpack the scenes in Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights.”
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Nov 17, 2019
Slovakia Freedom & Democracy Day 2019
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Today’s Doodle celebrates Slovakia’s Freedom & Democracy Day. One of the Central European country’s most important national holidays, November 17 marks an important anniversary in Slovakia’s struggle for liberty and government by the people.
On this day in 1989, thousands of university students lit candles and chanted “we have bare hands” in unarmed protest against Czechoslovakia’s repressive Soviet-backed government. The demonstration was inspired by a similar uprising 50 years before during World War II. A series of escalating protests triggered the nonviolent “Velvet Revolution,” which led to democratic reforms that allowed dissident playwright Václav Havel to be elected President of Czechoslovakia the following month.
Although the Czech Republic and Slovakia became separate states in 1993, Freedom & Democracy Day is still observed in both countries. The occasion is marked by street festivals, cultural events, candle-lighting ceremonies, and government officials paying respect to the sacrifices of student activists over the years.
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Nov 14, 2019
321st Anniversary of the First Lighting of Eddystone Lighthouse
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Situated near the mouth of the English channel, the Eddystone reef is among the world’s most hazardous stretches of water, infamously known for causing numerous shipwrecks over the years. Today’s Doodle celebrates the first lighting of Eddystone Lighthouse, the first lighthouse built on those infamous rocks on this day in 1698.
It was English merchant Henry Winstanley, who’d invested in ships that sunk at Eddystone, who accepted the daunting challenge of building a much-needed lighthouse essentially in the wide open sea, 14 miles from the coast of Plymouth.
Work began in 1696 but was delayed when a French vessel arrived and took Winstanley prisoner. Although England and France were at war, the French king Louis XIV released Winstanley, saying that “France was at war with England, not with humanity." It was clear that the importance of the lighthouse transcended international conflicts.
Rising some 80 feet above the rock, the Eddystone Lighthouse was surmounted by a weather vane and domed cupola containing 60 candles and a “great hanging lamp” to warn navigators to steer clear of danger. Requiring extensive repairs after withstanding its first punishing North Atlantic winter, the lighthouse was substantially redesigned before its official completion in 1699.
Although Winstanley believed that the lighthouse could withstand "the greatest storm that ever was," it was destroyed during the historic Great Storm of 1703. Nevertheless, Winstanley had proved it was not just necessary but also possible and vitally important to build a lighthouse on this treacherous site, despite the extreme difficulties and dangers. A series of lighthouses have been erected in the same place since then, all of them safeguarding the lives of maritime travelers for more than three centuries.