Google doodles

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13 Jul 2011

Sir George Gilbert Scott's 200th Birthday





Sir George Gilbert Scott, known as Sir Gilbert Scott, was a prolific English Gothic revival architect, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches and cathedrals, although he started his career as a leading designer of workhouses. Over 800 buildings were designed or altered by him.

Scott was the architect of many iconic buildings, including the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, the Albert Memorial, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, all in London, St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, the main building of the University of Glasgow, St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh and King's College Chapel, London.

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14 Jul 2011
Bastille Day 2011

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18 Jul 2011
Marine Day 2011





Marine Day, also known as "Ocean Day" or "Sea Day", is a Japanese national holiday usually celebrated on the third Monday in July. The purpose of the holiday is to give thanks to the ocean's bounty and to consider the importance of the ocean to Japan as an island nation.

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19 Jul 2011
Xu Beihong's 116th Birthday




Xu Beihong, also known as Ju Péon, was a Chinese painter.

He was primarily known for his Chinese ink paintings of horses and birds and was one of the first Chinese artists to articulate the need for artistic expressions that reflected a modern China at the beginning of the 20th century. He was also regarded as one of the first to create monumental oil paintings with epic Chinese themes – a show of his high proficiency in an essential Western art technique. He was one of the four pioneers of Chinese modern art who earned the title of "The Four Great Academy Presidents".

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20 Jul 2011
Gregor Mendel's 189th Birthday





Gregor Johann Mendel was a meteorologist, mathematician, biologist, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brno, Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire [today's Czech Republic] and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics. Though farmers had known for millennia that crossbreeding of animals and plants could favor certain desirable traits, Mendel's pea plant experiments conducted between 1856 and 1863 established many of the rules of heredity, now referred to as the laws of Mendelian inheritance.

Mendel worked with seven characteristics of pea plants: plant height, pod shape and color, seed shape and color, and flower position and color. Taking seed color as an example, Mendel showed that when a true-breeding yellow pea and a true-breeding green pea were cross-bred their offspring always produced yellow seeds. However, in the next generation, the green peas reappeared at a ratio of 1 green to 3 yellow. To explain this phenomenon, Mendel coined the terms "recessive" and "dominant" in reference to certain traits. In the preceding example, the green trait, which seems to have vanished in the first filial generation, is recessive and the yellow is dominant. He published his work in 1866, demonstrating the actions of invisible "factors"—now called genes—in predictably determining the traits of an organism.

The profound significance of Mendel's work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century [more than three decades later] with the rediscovery of his laws. Erich von Tschermak, Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns independently verified several of Mendel's experimental findings in 1900, ushering in the modern age of genetics.

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20 Jul 2011
Colombian Independence Day 2011 by Claudia Rueda

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22 Jul 2011

Alexander Calder's 113th Birthday






Our homepage doodle today celebrates the birthday of Alexander Calder, an American artist best known for inventing the mobile.

Last year I wandered into a white room at Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago full of Alexander Calder’s delicate “objects,” all beautifully balanced and proportioned, moving gently in the air currents like a whimsical metal forest. Calder took ordinary materials at hand—wire, scraps of sheet metal—and made them into brilliant forms, letting space and motion do the rest. As an engineer, I work with abstractions, too, so this really struck me.

But you kind of want to play with the things. They do not let you do that at museums.

So I coded up a very basic demo of a mobile and showed it to a friend, who showed it to one of our doodlers—and then this amazing thing happened: talented artists and engineers who liked the idea just started to help! What we ended up with is way cooler than anything I could have built on my own. I’m proud to work for a company where an idea like this can actually happen.

This is Google’s first doodle made entirely using HTML5 canvas, so you need to use a modern browser to interact with it. It runs a physics simulation on the mobile’s geometry, and then does realtime 3D rendering with vector graphics. Only recently have browsers advanced to the point where this is possible.

I like to think Calder would have appreciated today’s doodle, since we’re setting up shapes and abstractions and letting them act on their own. Hint: try it out on a laptop with an accelerometer!

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24 Jul 2011
100th Anniversary of the rediscovery of Machu Picchu




Machu Picchu is a 15th-century Inca citadel, located in the Eastern Cordillera of southern Peru, on a 2,430-metre [7,970 ft] mountain ridge. It is located in the Machupicchu District within Urubamba Province above the Sacred Valley, which is 80 kilometres [50 mi] northwest of Cuzco. The Urubamba River flows past it, cutting through the Cordillera and creating a canyon with a tropical mountain climate.

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27 Jul 2011
Enrique Granados' 144th Birthday



Pantaleón Enrique Joaquín Granados Campiña, commonly known as Enrique Granados, was a Spanish composer of classical music, and concert pianist. His most well known works include Goyescas, the Spanish Dances , and María del Carmen.

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29 Jul 2011
Medellin Flower Festival 2011






The Flowers Festival is a festival that takes place in Medellín, Colombia. The festival is the most important social event for the city and includes a pageant, automobiles, a Paso Fino horse parade and many musical concerts.

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30 Jul 2011
Giorgio Vasari's 500th Birthday




Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, architect, engineer, writer, and historian, best known for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing. Based on Vasari's text about Giotto's new manner of painting, Jules Michelet suggested for the first time the term Renaissance in his Histoire de France [1835], a term adopted by historiography and still in use today.

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1 August 2004
Swiss National Day 2004

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14 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Opening Ceremony

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16 Aug 2004
2004 Olympic Games - Swimming

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17 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Archery

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18 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Fencing

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19 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Weight Lifting

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20 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Football

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22 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Tennis

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23 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Table Tennis

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24 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Synchronised Swimming

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25 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Hurdles

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26 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Taekwondo

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27 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Gymnastics

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28 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Volleyball

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29 Aug 2004
2004 Athens Olympic Games - Closing Ceremony

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22 Sept 2004
Ray Charles' 74th Birthda


Ray Charles Robinson [September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004] was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and composer. Among friends and fellow musicians he preferred being called "Brother Ray". He was often referred to as "The Genius". Charles was blinded during childhood due to glaucoma.
Charles pioneered the soul music genre during the 1950s by combining blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel styles into the music he recorded for Atlantic. He contributed to the integration of country music, rhythm and blues, and pop music during the 1960s with his crossover success on ABC Records, notably with his two Modern Sounds albums. While he was with ABC, Charles became one of the first black musicians to be granted artistic control by a mainstream record company.

Charles' 1960 hit "Georgia On My Mind" was the first of his three career No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. His 1962 album Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music became his first album to top the Billboard 200. Charles had multiple singles reach the Top 40 on various Billboard charts: 44 on the US R&B singles chart, 11 on the Hot 100 singles chart, 2 on the Hot Country singles charts.

Charles cited Nat King Cole as a primary influence, but his music was also influenced by Louis Jordan and Charles Brown. He had a lifelong friendship and occasional partnership with Quincy Jones. Frank Sinatra called Ray Charles "the only true genius in show business," although Charles downplayed this notion. Billy Joel said, "This may sound like sacrilege, but I think Ray Charles was more important than Elvis Presley".

For his musical contributions, Charles received the Kennedy Center Honors, the National Medal of Arts, and the Polar Music Prize. He won 17 Grammy Awards, including 5 posthumously. Charles was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, and 10 of his recordings have been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Rolling Stone ranked Charles No. 10 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, and No. 2 on their list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.

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1 Nov 2004
Melbourne Cup 2004






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. This reduced the distance by 18.688 metres [61.312 ft], and Rain Lover's 1968 race record of 3:19.1 was accordingly adjusted to 3:17.9. The present record holder is the 1990 winner Kingston Rule with a time of 3:16.3.

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29 Mar 2005
Vincent van Gogh's 152nd Birthday



Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. He was not commercially successful, and his suicide at 37 came after years of mental illness, depression and poverty.


Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression continued, and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a Lefaucheux revolver. He died from his injuries two days later.

Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and he was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide and exists in the public imagination as a misunderstood genius, the artist "where discourses on madness and creativity converge". His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and he is remembered as an important but tragic painter, whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.

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3 February 2010
Norman Rockwell's 106th Birthday - © 1926 SEPS by Curtis Publishing







Norman Percevel Rockwell was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of American culture. Rockwell is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine over nearly five decades. Among the best-known of Rockwell's works are the Willie Gillis series, Rosie the Riveter, The Problem We All Live With, Saying Grace, and the Four Freedoms series. He is also noted for his 64-year relationship with the Boy Scouts of America , during which he produced covers for their publication Boys' Life, calendars, and other illustrations. These works include popular images that reflect the Scout Oath and Scout Law such as The Scoutmaster, A Scout is Reverent and A Guiding Hand, among many others.

Rockwell's work was dismissed by serious art critics in his lifetime. Many of his works appear overly sweet in the opinion of modern critics, especially the Saturday Evening Post covers, which tend toward idealistic or sentimentalized portrayals of American life. This has led to the often-deprecatory adjective, "Rockwellesque". Consequently, Rockwell is not considered a "serious painter" by some contemporary artists, who regard his work as bourgeois and kitsch. Writer Vladimir Nabokov stated that Rockwell's brilliant technique was put to "banal" use, and wrote in his book Pnin: "That Dalí is really Norman Rockwell's twin brother kidnaped by gypsies in babyhood." He is called an "illustrator" instead of an artist by some critics, a designation he did not mind, as that was what he called himself.

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8 December 2009
E.C. Segar's Birthday





Elzie Crisler Segar known by the pen name E. C. Segar, was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of Popeye, a pop culture character who first appeared in 1929 in Segar's comic strip Thimble Theatre. Segar is among the first to combine humor with long-running adventures.

In 1971, the National Cartoonists Society created the Elzie Segar Award in his honor. According to the Society's website, the award was "presented to a person who has made a unique and outstanding contribution to the profession of cartooning." The NCS board of directors chose the first winners, while King Features selected recipients in later years. Honorees have included Charles Schulz, Bil Keane, Al Capp, Bill Gallo and Mort Walker. The award was discontinued in 1999.

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11 Feb 2010
Napoleon Orda's Birthday




Napoleon Mateusz Tadeusz Orda was a Polish-Lithuanian musician, pianist, composer and artist, best known for numerous sketches of historical sites of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.

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12 Feb 2010
2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Luge






A luge is a small one- or two-person sled on which one sleds supine [face up]mand feet-first. A luger steers by using the calf muscles to flex the sled's runners or by exerting opposite shoulder pressure to the seat. Racing sleds weigh 21–25 kg [46–55 lb] for singles and 25–30 kg [55–66 lb] for doubles. Luge is also the name of an Olympic sport.

Lugers can reach speeds of 140 km/h [87 mph]. Austrian Manuel Pfister reached a top speed of 154 km/h [96 mph on a track in Whistler, Canada, prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics. Lugers compete against a timer in one of the most precisely timed sports in the world—to one thousandth of a second on artificial tracks.

The first recorded use of the term "luge" dates to 1905 and derives from the Savoy/Swiss dialect of the French word luge, meaning "small coasting sled".

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13 Feb 2010
2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Snowboarding




Snowboarding is a recreational and competitive activity that involves descending a snow-covered slope while standing on a snowboard that is almost always attached to a rider's feet. It features in the Winter Olympic Games and Winter Paralympic Games.

The development of snowboarding was inspired by skateboarding, sledding, surfing and skiing. It was developed in the United States in the 1960s, became a Winter Olympic Sport at Nagano in 1998^[1] and featured in the Winter Paralympics at Sochi in 2014. As of 2015, its popularity [as measured by equipment sales] in the United States peaked in 2007 and has been in a decline since.

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14 Feb 2010
Valentine's Day/2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Pairs Skating




Pair skating is a figure skating discipline defined by the International Skating Union as "the skating of two persons in unison who perform their movements in such harmony with each other as to give the impression of genuine Pair Skating as compared with independent Single Skating". Pair skating, along with men's and women's single skating, has been an Olympic discipline since figure skating, the oldest Winter Olympic sport, was introduced at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London.

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15 Feb 2010
2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Cross Country Skiing








Cross-country skiing is a form of skiing where skiers rely on their own locomotion to move across snow-covered terrain, rather than using ski lifts or other forms of assistance. Cross-country skiing is widely practiced as a sport and recreational activity; however, some still use it as a means of transportation. Cross-country skiing has been contested at the Winter Olympic Games since the first Winter Games in 1924 in Chamonix, France. The women's events were first contested at the 1952 Winter Olympics.

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16 Feb 2010
2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Curling


Curling is a sport in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area which is segmented into four concentric circles. It is related to bowls, boules and shuffleboard. Two teams, each with four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called rocks, across the ice curling sheet toward the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each team has eight stones, with each player throwing two. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both teams have thrown all of their stones. A game usually consists of eight or ten ends.

Curling has been a medal sport in the Winter Olympic Games since the 1998 Winter Olympics. It currently includes men's, women's and mixed doubles tournaments [the mixed doubles event was held for the first time in 2018].

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17 Feb 2010
2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Skiing



Skiing is a means of transport using skis to glide on snow. Variations of purpose include basic transport, a recreational activity, or a competitive winter sport. Many types of competitive skiing events are recognized by the International Olympic Committee and the International Ski Federation.

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18 Feb 2010
2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Skeleton





Skeleton is a winter sliding sport in which a person rides a small sled, known as a skeleton bobsled [or -sleigh], down a frozen track while lying face down and head-first. The sport and the sled may have been named from the bony appearance of the sled.

Unlike other sliding sports of bobsleigh and luge, the race always involves single riders. Like bobsleigh, but unlike luge, the race begins with a running start from the opening gate at the top of the course. The skeleton sled is thinner and heavier than the luge sled, and skeleton affords the rider more precise control of the sled. Skeleton is the slowest of the three sliding sports, as skeleton's face-down, head-first riding position is less aerodynamic than luge's face-up, feet-first ride.

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19 Feb 2010
2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Ski Jump





Ski jumping is a winter sport in which competitors aim to achieve the longest jump after descending from a specially designed ramp on their skis. Along with jump length, competitor's style and other factors affect the final score. Ski jumping was first contested in Norway in the late 19th century, and later spread through Europe and North America in the early 20th century. Along with cross-country skiing, it constitutes the traditional group of Nordic skiing disciplines.

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19 Feb 2010
2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Alpine Skiing






Since 1985, the World Championships have been scheduled every odd-numbered year, independent of the Winter Olympics. At the World Championships, the combined returned as a stand-alone event in 1982 and the super-G debuted in 1987. The combined event went from points to a total time in 1996 [[postponed from 1995), and changed to super combined in 2007.

The event is traditionally dominated by Alpine countries, Austria has a commanding lead in total medals with 121 and in gold medals with 37.

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19 Feb 2010
2010 Vancouver Olympic Games - Alpine Skiing








Alpine skiing at the 2010 Winter Olympics was held in Canada at Whistler Creekside in Whistler, British Columbia, north of Vancouver. The ten events were scheduled.

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1 Mar 2010
Frederic Chopin's 200th Birthday







Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period who wrote primarily for solo piano. He has maintained worldwide renown as a leading musician of his era, one whose "poetic genius was based on a professional technique that was without equal in his generation."

All of Chopin's compositions include the piano. Most are for solo piano, though he also wrote two piano concertos, a few chamber pieces, and some 19 songs set to Polish lyrics. His piano writing was technically demanding and expanded the limits of the instrument, his own performances noted for their nuance and sensitivity. His major piano works also include mazurkas, waltzes, nocturnes, polonaises, the instrumental ballade [which Chopin created as an instrumental genre], études, impromptus, scherzos, preludes and sonatas, some published only posthumously. Among the influences on his style of composition were Polish folk music, the classical tradition of J. S. Bach, Mozart, and Schubert, and the atmosphere of the Paris salons of which he was a frequent guest. His innovations in style, harmony, and musical form, and his association of music with nationalism, were influential throughout and after the late Romantic period.

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4 Mar 2010
Antonio Vivaldi's Birthday






Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, impresario, and Roman Catholic priest. Born in Venice, the capital of the Venetian Republic, Vivaldi is regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, being paramount in the development of Johann Sebastian Bach's instrumental music. He composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other musical instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as the Four Seasons.

Many of his compositions were written for the all-female music ensemble of the Ospedale della Pietà, a home for abandoned children. Vivaldi had worked there as a Catholic priest for 18 months and was employed there from 1703 to 1715 and from 1723 to 1740. Vivaldi also had some success with expensive stagings of his operas in Venice, Mantua and Vienna. After meeting the Emperor Charles VI, Vivaldi moved to Vienna, hoping for royal support. However, the Emperor died soon after Vivaldi's arrival, and Vivaldi himself died in poverty less than a year later.

After almost two centuries of decline, Vivaldi's music underwent a revival in the early 20th century, with much scholarly research devoted to his work. Many of Vivaldi's compositions, once thought lost, have been rediscovered – in one case as recently as 2006. His music remains widely popular in the present day and is regularly played all over the world.

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14 Mar 2010
Felix Rodriguez de la Fuente's Birthday






Félix Samuel Rodríguez de la Fuente was a Spanish naturalist and broadcaster. He is best known for the highly successful and influential TV series, El Hombre y la Tierra [1974–1980]. A graduate in medicine and self-taught in biology, he was a multifaceted charismatic figure whose influence has endured despite the passing years.

In 1960, he became one of King Saud of Arabia's personal falconers after impressing the Saudi Government with two attractive specimens on behalf of Franco, which allowed him to become popular and produce his first documentary programme, Señores del espacio. His knowledge covered areas such as falconry and ethology, emphasizing the study of wolves. Rodríguez de la Fuente also served as expedition guide and photographer on safaris in Africa, lecturer and writer, and contributed greatly to environmental awareness in Spain at a time when Conservationism was unheard of in the country.

He has thus been credited as "the father of environmentalism" in Spain. His impact was not only national but also international and it is estimated that his television programmes, which were broadcast in many countries, have been seen by millions.

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22 Apr 2005
Earth Day 2005

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24 Apr 2010
Hubble Space Telescope's 20th Anniversary








The Hubble Space Telescope [often referred to as HST or Hubble] is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned both as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. The Hubble telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

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9 May 2010
J.M. Barrie's 150th Birthday






Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, was a Scottish novelist and playwright, best remembered as the creator of Peter Pan. He was born and educated in Scotland and then moved to London, where he wrote a number of successful novels and plays. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys, who inspired him to write about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens [first included in Barrie's 1902 adult novel The Little White Bird], then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a 1904 "fairy play" about an ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland.

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25 May 2010
Argentina's Bicentennial Independence

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15 August 2019
India Independence Day 2019







Today’s Doodle, by India-born, Copenhagen-based guest artist Shaivalini Kumar, celebrates Independence Day in India. On this day in 1947 one of the world’s oldest and most ethnically diverse civilizations became a sovereign nation, free from British rule. The Doodle depicts traditional motifs from Indian textiles evoking the complex yet harmonious “patchwork” of Indian culture, ranging from education, to the arts, to courage and compassion.

India is the world’s second most populous country, and many of its 1.3 billion citizens will join in the Independence Day festivities. While the subcontinent marks the occasion in various ways—from patriotic kite-flying to Amritsar’s “beating retreat” ceremony—no site is more historically significant than Lahori Gate at the Red Fort in Delhi, where then Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru first addressed the newly independent nation.

India’s flag will be seen flying proudly today from Delhi to Bombay and everywhere in between. As the flag is raised each year, a 21-gun salute rings out, accompanied by the national anthem “Jana Gana Mana.” Parades, awards, and cultural events complete the momentous occasion.