Google Doodles

[Sheriff Roland]

(Amercan illustrator) Edward Gorey's 88 birthday

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/feb/22/google-doodle-celebrates-edward-gorey

A Google doodle has been unveiled today to mark what would have been the 88th birthday of cult author and illustrator Edward Gorey.

Gorey, who died in April 2000 at the age of 75, was known for often macabre drawings and picture-stories which gained him a worldwide cult following. The doodle features six cartoonish pictures spelling out the name of the search engine in his surreal cartoonish style.

Gorey's work inspired the film director Tim Burton and the goth rock band Nine Inch Nails. His macabre books frequently showed children or other hapless victims succumbing to an undeserved death.

As well as his own picture story books, the Chicago-born artist illustrated works by authors including Samuel Beckett, TS Eliot, Edward Lear and Muriel Spark, as well as drawing new pictures for Aesop's fables and the Brer Rabbit stories.

Gorey was an eccentric. In the 25 years between 1957 and 1982 he did not miss a performance by the New York City Ballet, attending in an outfit consisting of an enormous fur coat and white tennis shoes.

His melodramatically sinister sets and costumes for the 1977 Broadway production of Dracula netted him a Tony Award for costume design.

[Penthesilea]

Different one in Germany today:

225. birthday of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer

[Sheriff Roland]

Miriam Makeba's 81's Birthday

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/miriam-makeba-award-winning-south-african-1741612

The first singer to popularize African music around the world has been honoured with a Google doodle.

Miriam Makeba, nicknamed Mama Africa, rose to prominence in the 1960s and would have celebrated her 81st birthday today.

The Grammy Award-winning South African singer and civil rights activist was best known for the song 'Pata Pata'.

Makeba recorded and toured with the likes of Paul Simon and Harry Belafonte during a glittering career.

She was an active campaigner against apartheid through three decades in exile and was loathed by South Africa's white minority rulers.

She had her citizenship revoked in 1959 and was only able to return to her homeland 31 years later.

Makeba died of a heart attack in November 2008 after performing a concert in southern Italy.

Nelson Mandela paid tribute at the time, saying: "Despite the pain she felt to leave behind her beloved family and her country, she continued to make us proud as she used fame to focus attention on the abomination of apartheid.

"It was fitting her last moments were on stage."

[Sheriff Roland]

Douglas Adam's 61st Birthday

Douglas Adams, noted author and humorist, is the inspiration behind Monday's Google doodle. Adams is of course best known for his cult classic book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Douglas Adams was on born on 11 March 1952 in Cambridge England. He showed a flair for writing from an early age and went to graduate in English literature in 1974. After graduation, he moved to London with an aim of becoming a TV and radio writer. It was here that we met Monty Python's Graham Chapman, and the two went on to form a writing partnership, albeit for a brief time.

Adams was credited with writing one of the sketches in a Monty Python episode, becoming one of only two people outside the original Monty Python members to be given a writing credit. Adams and Chapman also attempted non-Python projects, but got nowhere and Adams was forced to series of non-writing-related jobs.

While Adams continued to do some writing, his career took off after he got an opportunity to work with the BBC as a radio producer. It was here that The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was born as a science-fiction comedy series for the radio. The first series - consisting of six episodes - was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March and April 1978, and received an excellent response. A seventh episode was broadcast on 24 December 1978.

The first four episodes of the series were adapted into the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was first published in 1979, initially in paperback, and reached number one on the book charts in only its second week. The book sold over 250,000 copies within three months of its release.

A second series of five episodes was broadcast one per night, during the week of 21-25 January 1980. Four more books followed, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984) and Mostly Harmless (1992). Adams also wrote 3 episodes of popular TV series Doctor Who.

Douglas Adams was an avid technologist, and a Macintosh user from the time the original Mac came out in 1984 until his death in 2001. His very last post to his own forum was in praise of Mac OS X and the possibilities of its Cocoa programming framework.

Adams died of a heart attack on 11 May 2001, aged 49.

[Fran]

It's interactive:

[youtube=425,350]8RxzvCpZUgE[/youtube]

So clever!

[Sheriff Roland]

St. Pat's 2013

And they dance ... plus see all past St. Pat google doodles since 2000

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgn4a3SMRRY[/youtube]

[CellarDweller]

I thought today's Doodle was very cute.

[Penthesilea]

150. birthday of Adalbert Czerny, one
of the founders of modern pediatrics.

[Sheriff Roland]

Maria Sibylla Merian's 366's birthday

Google doodle today celebrates the 366th birth anniversary of German naturalist and scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian. Merian was well known for studying as well as making detailed paintings of plants and insects. She is credited of making significant, though not well known, contributions to the field of entomology due to her observation of metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly.

Merian was born on April 2, 1647 in Frankfurt and began painting images of insects and plants at the age of 13, with encouragement from her stepfather. Married at the age of 15, she began giving painting lessons to wealthy women, which got her access to well-maintained gardens of the elite. In these gardens, she began observing insects, including the caterpillars and butterflies.

 Neues Blumenbuch, the first book by Merian, was released in three parts between 1675 and 1680. Later, she studied the lifecycle of a butterfly and released the book with sketches and illustrations of various species and the plants they feed on.

 Merian had two daughters and was divorced in 1692. After her divorce, she continued to work with many contemporary scientists of the time.

 The doodle by Google shows butterfly, caterpillars, cocoon, reptiles and insects that are painted on vines that create the company's logo.

[Sheriff Roland]

Ella Fitzgerald's 96th birthday