Google doodles

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12 Jun 2016
Philippines Independence Day 2016




Today marks Philippine Independence Day, and the first month since their national elections. In today's Doodle by Robinson Wood, we can see elated citizens celebrating on a jeepney: an iconic Filipino traveling vehicle. You can see these types of buses all over Manila, which is the capital and the center of many of today's festivities. One of the most important Freedom Day traditions is the raising of the flag, and cities all over the Philippines will proudly hoist the blue, red and white.


As Filipinos rally around their new President, Vice President and senators, we hope today's Doodle inspires a sense of bayanihan — a sense of working together for a common cause. The brilliant colors of the Doodle and the hopeful faces reflect the bright future of this great nation and its people.

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12 Jun 2016
Russia National Day 2016



Today is the national day of Russia, which is aptly called "Russia Day". On this day, many people in Russia will have the day off to spend with friends and family. There will be fireworks and concerts in many different cities — in Red Square in Moscow, the celebration is sure to be lots of fun. From the square you can see both the Kremlin where the President lives and Saint Basil's Cathedral, which is the subject of today's Doodle.

The cathedral was completed in 1561 and its iconic spires and vivid colors set the tone for many other buildings in the square. To capture the authentic Russian feel of the structure, Robinson Wood matched the text and frame of today's Doodle to the architectural style of the cathedral.

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12 Jun 2016
Dia dos Namorados 2016

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12 June 2013
Dia Dos Namorados 2013

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1 Aug 2010
Swiss National Day 2010

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MAY 3, 2021
TEACHER APPRECIATION WEEK







https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&i...0KHYNJDRwQPQgJ

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2 Nov 2010
Melbourne Cup 2010







The Melbourne Cup is Australia's most famous annual Thoroughbred horse race. It is a 3200-metre race for three-year-olds and over, conducted by the Victoria Racing Club on the Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, Victoria as part of the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival. It is the richest "two-mile" handicap in the world and one of the richest turf races. The event starts at 3:00 pm on the first Tuesday of November and is known locally as "the race that stops the nation".

The Melbourne Cup has a long tradition, with the first race held in 1861. It was originally over two miles [3.219 km] but was shortened to 3,200 metres [1.988 mi] in 1972 when Australia adopted the metric system.

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13 Nov 2010
Robert Louis Stevenson's 160th Birthday








Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet and travel writer, most noted for writing Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Kidnapped, and A Child's Garden of Verses.

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25 Nov 2010
Nikolay Pirogov's 200th Birthday






Nikolay Ivanovich Pirogov was a Russian scientist, medical doctor, pedagogue, public figure, and corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences [1847], one of the most widely recognized Russian physicians. Considered to be the founder of field surgery, he was the first surgeon to use anaesthesia in a field operation [1847] and one of the first surgeons in Europe to use ether as an anaesthetic. He is credited with invention of various kinds of surgical operations and developing his own technique of using plaster casts to treat fractured bones.

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26 Nov 2010
65th Birthday of Pippi Longstocking







Pippi Longstockingis the fictional main character in an eponymous series of children's books by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren. Pippi was named by Lindgren's daughter Karin, who asked her mother for a get-well story when she was off school.

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11 Dec 2010
Carlos Gardel's Birthday





Carlos Gardel was a French Argentine singer, songwriter, composer and actor, and the most prominent figure in the history of tango. He was one of the most influential interpreters of world popular music in the first half of the 20th century. Gardel is the most famous popular tango singer of all time and is recognized throughout the world. He was notable for his baritone voice and the dramatic phrasing of his lyrics. Together with lyricist and long-time collaborator Alfredo Le Pera, Gardel wrote several classic tangos.

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16 Dec 2010
Jane Austen's 235th Birthday






Jane Austen was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots often explore the dependence of women on marriage in the pursuit of favourable social standing and economic security. Her works critique the novels of sensibility of the second half of the 18th century and are part of the transition to 19th-century literary realism. Her use of biting irony, along with her realism, humour, and social commentary, have long earned her acclaim among critics, scholars, and popular audiences alike.

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20 Dec 2010
Mehmet Akif Ersoy's Birthday





Mehmet Akif Ersoy was an Ottoman-born Turkish poet, writer, academic, politician, and the author of the Turkish National Anthem. Widely regarded as one of the premiere literary minds of his time, Ersoy is noted for his command of the Turkish language, as well as his patriotism and role in the Turkish War of Independence.

A framed version of the national anthem by Ersoy typically occupies the wall above the blackboard in the classrooms of every public as well as most private schools around Turkey, along with a Turkish flag, a photograph of the country's founding father Atatürk, and a copy of Atatürk's speech to the nation's youth.

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2 Jan 2011
Večerníček's 46th Anniversary







Večerníček is a television program for children in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It has been broadcast regularly for over 50 years. Before the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993, two versions – one in Czech and one in Slovak – were aired in the respective parts of Czechoslovakia. Similar shows in other European countries include Sandmännchen in Germany and Esti mese in Hungary.

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6 Jan 2011
Khalil Gibran's Birthday




Gibran Khalil Gibran, usually referred to in English as Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese-American writer, poet and visual artist, also considered a philosopher although he himself rejected the title. He is best known as the author of The Prophet, which was first published in the United States in 1923 and has since become one of the best-selling books of all time, having been translated into more than 100 languages.

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10 Jan 2011
Coming of Age Day 2011








Coming of Age Day is a Japanese holiday held annually on the second Monday of January. It is held in order to congratulate and encourage all those who have reached or will reach the age of maturity [20 years old] between April 2 of the previous year and April 1 of the current year, and to help them realize that they have become adults. Festivities include coming of age ceremonies held at local and prefectural offices, as well as after-parties among family and friends.

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7 Jan 2012
Charles Addams' 100th Birthday









From time to time we invite guests to post about items of interest and are pleased to have H. Kevin Miserocchi, executive director of the Tee and Charles Addams Foundation, join us today to talk about cartoonist Charles Samuel Addams. Addams is best known as the creator of the Addams Family, and is the subject of a doodle today in honor of his 100th birthday. -Ed.

I spent the summer of 1979 fundraising with Tee Matthews Miller for the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons. We spent most of our time in the home she shared with her cartoonist paramour—and too many dogs and cats to name—during his weekends away from Manhattan. I’d met her partner several times before I realized that behind all the stacks of paper and collectibles and layers of dust and pet fur in Tee’s office den, the walls were decorated with familiar art. Not just any art—the original artwork from the pages of The New Yorker magazines that my brother and I had cut up or crayoned across when we were boys. Tee’s boyfriend was the Charles Addams—the one with two d’s. I was home, and our friendship was forever cemented.

They were married in Tee’s pet cemetery in Water Mill, NY in 1980—a surprise for the 60 guests coming for cocktails during the Memorial Day weekend. The wedding party all wore black. It was the union of a wonderful woman of gentle spirit and great generosity and a beguiling man with a subtly wicked sense of humor. Bashful and soft-spoken as he was, he had a devil-child glint in his eyes and a Lugosi-like mouth when he laughed, showing none of his teeth.

Eleven years after his 1988 death, his widow and I formed the not-for-profit Tee and Charles Foundation to protect his legacy as an extraordinary cartoonist with a painterly technique, and to educate people about Charlie’s gift by exhibiting his work worldwide. Following Tee’s passing in 2002, the Foundation dedicated the couple’s Sagaponack homestead, “The Swamp,” as a museum. They had moved there in the mid-1980s, and in true Addams style, they took their cemetery with them—a sweet place where their ashes are interred alongside those of their beloved dogs and cats.

Of the thousands of works Charlie published in his 55 years of cartooning, only 150 were devoted to the group of characters who became known as The Addams Family. But the perfectly off-center humor behind these characters won worldwide adoration even before they became the television and film family we know today. Even for those who never had the thrill of knowing the classy gentleman behind this unique art, Charlie’s family continues to capture the hearts of new generations of cartoon aficionados. We hope today’s doodle inspires you to seek out more of his work.

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7 Jan 2012
Oskar Luts' 125th Birthday






Oskar Luts was best known for his semi-autobiographical tale, Kevade, which takes place in a schoolhouse in rural Estonia. Working closely with a Googler from the Estonia office, I received plenty of great suggestions on which scene[s] to depict out of this touching story of friendship, love, and the daily lives of kids in school.

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9 Jan 2012
Luis Coloma's 161st Birthday




Luis Coloma Roldán was a Spanish author most known for creating the character Ratoncito Pérez. Coloma was also a prolific writer of short stories and his complete works, which includes his novels, biographies, and other works, have since been collected in a multi-volume set. He studied at the University of Seville, where he graduated with a Master's degree in law, although he never got to practice law. In 1908 Coloma became a member of the Real Academia.

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11 Jan 2012
Nicolas Steno's 374th Birthday





Known as the father of stratigraphy and geology, Nicholas Steno worked to understand history by what he could find in the ground. Rather than simply write books about his findings, Steno opted to do his own hands-on research. As an innovative thinker, he disagreed with his contemporaries in thinking that shark-tooth-shaped objects found imbedded in rocks "fell from the sky." Instead, Steno argued that these formations were fossils. His dedication to analysis, critical thinking, and creative thinking make him a great subject for a Google doodle!

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14 Jan 2012
National Children's Day 2012

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20 Jan 2012
Omar Rayo's 84th Birthday






Omar Rayo Reyes was a renowned Colombian painter, sculptor, caricaturist and plastic artist. He won the 1970 Salón de Artistas Colombianos. Rayo worked with abstract geometry primarily employing black, white, red and yellow. He was part of the Op Art movement. Rayo's work shows that geometric art is as much a part of the past as it is of the future. He used traces of the past to discover new ways to present visual and geometric sketches.

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21 Jan 2012
Grandparents' Day 2012

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25 Jan 2012
Vladmir Vysotsky's 74th Birthday





Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky was a Soviet singer-songwriter, poet, and actor whose career had an immense and enduring effect on Soviet culture. He became widely known for his unique singing style and for his lyrics, which featured social and political commentary in often humorous street jargon. He was also a prominent stage and screen actor. Though his work was largely ignored by the official Soviet cultural establishment, he achieved remarkable fame during his lifetime, and to this day exerts significant influence on many of Russia's popular musicians and actors years after his death.

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26 Jan 2012
Republic Day 2012





Republic Day is a national holiday in India. It honours the date on which the Constitution of India came into effect on 26 January 1950 replacing the Government of India Act [1935] as the governing document of India and thus, turning the nation into a newly formed republic.

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7 Feb 2012
Charles Dickens' 200th Birthday








Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime and, by the 20th century, critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories are widely read today.

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1 Mar 2012
Quinquela Martín's 122nd Birthday






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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7 Nov 2013
Ary Barroso's 110th Birthday




Ary de Resende Barroso, better known as Ary Barroso, was a Brazilian composer, pianist, soccer commentator, and talent-show host on radio and TV. He was one of Brazil's most successful songwriters in the first half of the 20th century. Barroso also composed many songs for Carmen Miranda during her career.

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7 Nov 2013
Rafael Pombo's 180th Birthday






José Rafael de Pombo y Rebolledo was a Colombian poet born in Bogotá. Trained as a mathematician and an engineer in a military school, Rafael Pombo served in the army and he traveled to the United States of America as Secretary of the Legation in Washington. After completing his diplomatic assignment, he was hired by D. Appleton & Company in New York to translate into Spanish nursery rhymes from the Anglo-Saxon oral tradition. The product of this work, more than a translation, was a transformative adaptation published in two books under the titles Cuentos pintados para niños and Cuentos morales para niños formales.

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15 Nov 2013
Emil Racoviță's 145th Birthday








Emil Gheorghe Racoviță was a Romanian biologist, zoologist, speleologist, and Antarctic explorer.

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18 Nov 2013
Morocco Independence Day 2013

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20 Nov 2013
Children's Day 2013 [Multiple Countries]

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21 Mar 2014
Ayrton Senna's 54th Birthday




Ayrton Senna da Silva \was a Brazilian racing driver who won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 1988, 1990 and 1991. Senna is one of three Formula One drivers from Brazil to win the World Championship and won 41 Grands Prix and 65 pole positions, with the latter being the record until 2006. He died in an accident leading the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix driving for the Williams team.

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21 Mar 2014
Nowruz 2014






Nowruz is the Iranian New Year, also known as the Persian New Year, which begins on the spring equinox, marking the first day of Farvardin, the first month of the Iranian solar calendar. It is celebrated worldwide by various ethno-linguistic groups, and falls on or around March 21 of the Gregorian calendar. Nowruz falls on March 20 in 2021.

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21 Mar 2014
Mother's Day [Middle East]

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18 Apr 2014
Ivana Brlić Mažuranić's 140th Birthday [born 1874]





Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić was a Croatian writer. Within her native land, as well as internationally, she has been praised as the best Croatian writer for children.

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27 Apr 2014
South Africa Freedom Day





Freedom Day is a public holiday in South Africa celebrated on the 27th of April. It celebrates freedom and commemorates the first post-apartheid elections held on that day in 1994. The elections were the first non-racial national elections where everyone of voting age of over 18 from any race group, including foreign citizens permanently resident in South Africa, were allowed to vote. Previously, under the apartheid regime, non-whites in general had only limited rights to vote while black South Africans had no voting rights whatsoever.

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28 Apr 2014
Cinecittà's 77 anniversary





Cinecittà Studios is a large film studio in Rome, Italy. With an area of 400,000 square metres [99 acres], it is the largest film studio in Europe, and is considered the hub of Italian cinema. The studios were constructed during the Fascist era as part of a plan to revive the Italian film industry.

Filmmakers such as Federico Fellini, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Mel Gibson have worked at Cinecittà. More than 3,000 movies have been filmed there, of which 90 received an Academy Award nomination and 47 of these won it. In the 1950s, the number of international productions being made there led to Rome being dubbed "Hollywood on the Tiber."

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7 May 2014
Olympe de Gouges's 266th Birthday







Olympe de Gouges was a French playwright and political activist whose writings on women's rights and abolitionism reached a large audience in various countries.

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15 May 2014
Teachers' Day 2014 – Mexico

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21 May 2014
Mary Anning's 215th Birthday







Mary Anning was an English fossil collector, dealer, and palaeontologist who became known around the world for finds she made in Jurassic marine fossil beds in the cliffs along the English Channel at Lyme Regis in the county of Dorset in Southwest England. Anning's findings contributed to changes in scientific thinking about prehistoric life and the history of the Earth.

In 2010, the Royal Society included Anning in a list of the ten British women who have most influenced the history of science

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29 May 2014
Norman Frederick Hetherington's 93rd Birthday







Mr. Squiggle and Friends are up to their old tricks on our homepage in Australia for Norman Frederick Hetherington’s 93rd birthday. Hetherington was a cartoonist and puppeteer, best known for creating Mr. Squiggle, Australia's longest-running children's television series.

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4 May 2021
Celebrating Hisaye Yamamoto






In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, today’s Doodle celebrates Japanese-American short story author Hisaye Yamamoto, among the first Asian Americans to receive post-war national literary recognition. Throughout an acclaimed career, Yamamoto constructed candid and incisive stories that aimed to bridge the cultural divide between first and second-generation Japanese-Americans by detailing their experiences in the wake of World War II.

Born on August 23, 1921, in Redondo Beach, California, Hisaye Yamamoto was the daughter of Japanese immigrant parents. In her teens, Yamamoto wrote articles for a daily newspaper for Japanese Californians under the pen name Napoleon. Following the outbreak of World War II and due to Executive Order 9066, Yamamoto’s family was among the over 120,000 Japanese-Americans forced by the U.S. to relocate to government prison camps [aka Japanese internment camps], where they faced violence and harsh conditions. Despite the injustices encountered daily, she kept her literary aspirations alive as a reporter and columnist for the “Poston Chronicle,” the camp newspaper.

As the dust settled from the war’s end, Yamamoto was released from the internment camp and returned to the Los Angeles area in 1945. Yamamoto soon found work as a columnist with the “Los Angeles Tribune,” a weekly Black-owned and founded newspaper that sought to diversify the voices in journalism and unify the Angelo Black community with Asian Americans.

Over the next three years gathering news for the publication, Yamamoto witnessed firsthand the widespread racism that many underrepresented groups faced. These experiences profoundly changed Yamamoto, who became a literary champion of not just the Asian American community, but for others who also endured di scrimination. In 1948, Yamamoto published her first short story, “The High Heeled Shoes,” which inspired Yamamoto to leave journalism and pursue writing full-time, often exploring topics related to the intersection of gender, race, and ethnicity in her works.

The adversity she overcame at the prison camp formed the basis for much of Yamamoto’s work, such as her 1950 short story “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara.” She also remained a life-long advocate in the fight against war, racism, and violence. In 1986, Yamamoto’s storytelling won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement for her contributions to American multicultural literature.

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4 May 2021
Geta Brătescu’s 95th birthday






Today’s Doodle, illustrated by Bucharest-based guest artist Irina Selaru, celebrates multidisciplinary Romanian artist Geta Brătescu on her 95th birthday. Credited as one of the first conceptual artists in Romania, Brătescu rose to international prominence with a series of exhibitions celebrating her prolific career in the 80s.

Georgeta Ann Comanescu was born on this day in 1926, north of the capital city of Bucharest in Ploiești, Romania. She worked as a children’s book illustrator in the 1950s, and later in the decade joined the Union of Fine Artists, a state organization through which she travelled the country to sketch Romanians in their everyday lives. A testament to her talent in design, in the early ‘60s she was named the artistic director of the prestigious literary magazine Secolul 20.

But it was in the studio that Brătescu created much of her best-known work across a variety of mediums, including drawing, photography, film, and collages of commonplace materials. She was known for tackling themes like the relationship between art and life with a characteristic dry humor, though she frequently resisted categorization of her work. In 1978, Brătescu opened up her space and process to the world in one of her most famous works, the meta black-and-white film, “Atelierul” [“The Studio”].

In 2017, at the twilight of her seven-decade-long career, Brătescu was given the honor to represent Romania at the prestigious Venice Biennale, and in the same year she was awarded the Ordinul Naţional “Steaua României” [National Order of the “Star of Romania”], the country’s highest civilian honor.

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4 May 2016
Jane Jacobs’ 100th birthday




Jane Jacobs was a self-taught journalist and community organizer that supported keeping the city of New York diverse in shape and function. She stood by beloved neighborhoods that were unjustly slated for "renewal" and revealed political biases in the permit process for new projects. In Jacob's opinion, cities are for the people, and they're safest when residents mingle on the street and in local businesses.

Jacobs developed her philosophy through living and interacting with the city itself, and described life on the city streets as a kind of social ballet. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities [1961] still sits in the American Library of Congress. Today's Doodle honors the 100th birthday of this fierce protector of New York City's urban landscape.

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4 May 2019
Eddie Aikau’s 73rd Birthday






Today’s Doodle celebrates Eddie Aikau, big wave surfer, lifeguard, and enduring symbol of Hawaiian heritage. Born on the island of Maui on this day in 1946, Eddie moved to Oahu with his family in 1959 and went on to become the first lifeguard hired by Honolulu officials to work on the North Shore of the island.

Not a single life was lost while he served as a lifeguard at Waimea Bay, making some 500 rescues without the assistance of a jet ski or any modern equipment. Eddie was famous for making rescues even in surf that reached 30 feet high. His fearlessness went on to inspire the slogan “Eddie would go.”

Hailing from a surfing family, Eddie was one of the first native Hawaiians to win the prestigious Duke Kahanamoku Invitational Surfing Championship in 1977, just four years after his older brother Clyde, who was the very first. Aside from his distinguished surfing career, Eddie found other ways to represent the culture of his native island. In 1978, Eddie joined the crew of the Hokule'a, a historically accurate double-hulled canoe retracing the ancient Polynesian migration route to Hawaii. The vessel sprung a leak and capsized in rough waters. Eddie was last seen heroically paddling off on his surfboard towards the nearest island to seek help for the crew, who were later rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Today, Eddie’s legacy lives on through the Eddie Aikau Foundation as well as the prestigious Eddie Aikau Invitational, which has seen some of big-wave surfing’s greatest names competing with maximum respect for the authenticity of surf culture.

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4 May 2010
Umm Kalthum's Birthday





Umm Kulthum was an Egyptian singer, songwriter, and film actress active from the 1920s to the 1970s. She was given the honorific title Kawkab al-Sharq [ 'Star of the East']. Umm Kulthum was known for her vocal ability and unique style. She sold over 80 million records worldwide, making her one of best-selling singers of all time from the Arab world.

She is considered a national icon in her native Egypt; she has been dubbed "The voice of Egypt" and "Egypt's fourth pyramid".

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5 May 2010
Rocket Festival






A Rocket Festival is a merit-making ceremony traditionally practiced by ethnic Lao people throughout much of Isan and Laos, in numerous villages and municipalities near the beginning of the wet season. Celebrations typically include preliminary music and dance performances, competitive processions of floats, dancers and musicians on the second day, and culminating on the third day in competitive firings of home-made rockets. Local participants and sponsors use the occasion to enhance their social prestige, as is customary in traditional Buddhist folk festivals throughout Southeast Asia.

Festival period: April - June. The Festival is most famous and widely known and are special programs and specific local patterns like Bung Fai or Parade dance and Beautiful Bung Fai float in Thailand such as Yasothon the second weekend of May, Suwannaphum District, Roi Et the first weekend of June, Phanom Phrai District Roi Et on full moon of the seventh month in Lunar year's calendar each year. The Bung Fai festival is not only found in Isan or Northeasthern Thailand and North Thailand and Laos, but also in Amphoe Sukhirin, Narathiwat.

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5 May 2010
Patios Cordobeses








The Cordovan patio is a characteristic element of the Andalusian city of Córdoba , Spain , and since 1921 it has been magnified with the famous Cordovan Courtyards Festival , declared a World Heritage Site in 2012 , whose tourist visits make this fame grow in the Exterior.

Inside, you can't think of a house that doesn't have a patio; the rest are flats or chalets. The collection of courtyards, from the courtyard of the Mosque-Cathedral to tiny courtyards, is so extensive that it is difficult to catalog. The limits are marked by the designations of corral , "scooter" or patio of lights , orchard , park or garden .

The so-called Patios de Córdoba are mainly located in the San Basilio neighborhood . We also find them in the neighborhoods of Santa Marina , San Lorenzo , La Magdalena and in the Jewish quarter of the city. In addition, the Viana Palace houses twelve patios inside.

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5 May 2009
250th Anniversary of Kew Gardens








Kew Gardens is a botanic garden in southwest London that houses the "largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world". Founded in 1840, from the exotic garden at Kew Park in Middlesex, England, its living collections includes some of the 27,000 taxa curated by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, while the herbarium, which is one of the largest in the world, has over 8.5 million preserved plant and fungal specimens. The library contains more than 750,000 volumes, and the illustrations collection contains more than 175,000 prints and drawings of plants. It is one of London's top tourist attractions and is a World Heritage Site.

Kew Gardens, together with the botanic gardens at Wakehurst in Sussex, are managed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, an internationally important botanical research and education institution that employs over 1,100 staff and is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The Kew site, which has been dated as formally starting in 1759, though it can be traced back to the exotic garden at Kew Park, formed by Henry, Lord Capell of Tewkesbury, consists of 132 hectares [330 acres] of gardens and botanical glasshouses, four Grade I listed buildings, and 36 Grade II listed structures, all set in an internationally significant landscape. It is listed Grade I on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.