Google Doodles

[Gopher Gary]

Today's Google Doodle is New Year's Eve 2016.



Happy New Year’s Eve! All across the world tonight, we’re sharing the eager anticipation of counting down to midnight: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

[Fun With Matches]

They look cool. I don't see any of these Google Doodles.

[Gopher Gary]

The New Year's Eve one is global, and the Macintosh one also showed in the UK. The holiday ones were also in the UK, except for the two southern hemisphere ones which mainly showed in Australia and South America.  You really don't see the one today? 

[Fun With Matches]

With the previous Doodles, I didn't see them. But yes, I see the New Year's Eve one.

[Gopher Gary]

Today's Google Doodle is New Year's Day 2017.



Cheers to a new year! As 2017 makes its debut, we celebrate new beginnings and set our resolutions. Here’s to another year of exploring, learning, and growing!

[Gopher Gary]

Today's Google Doodle is Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2017.



Today we celebrate the work and life of Martin Luther King Jr.

King was born in Atlanta in 1929. He began his pastoral career in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954, a year before Rosa Parks famously refused to give up her seat. Montgomery's community leaders chose King to organize the resulting bus boycott. From then on, his was the most powerful and lyrical voice in the effort to end segregation in the United States. King's message of nonviolence and love -- delivered in magnificent speeches and masterful writing -- shaped the American civil rights movement and inspired activists worldwide. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.

Today's Doodle, by guest artist Keith Mallett, captures one of the major themes of King's speeches and writing: unity. "All life is interrelated," he said. "We are all made to live together." King urged Americans of all races to keep "working toward a world of brotherhood, cooperation, and peace." 

Martin Luther King Jr. may seem like the sort of leader who comes along only once every century or so, but King himself would disagree with that notion. He taught that we are all capable of lighting the way to "the bright daybreak of freedom and justice," and that we can unite to show that "love is the most durable power in the world."

[renaeden]

I really like the artwork and message.

[Gopher Gary]

Today' Google Doodle is Ed Roberts’s 78th Birthday.



Today’s Doodle pays tribute to an early leader of the disability rights movement, Ed Roberts. After contracting polio at age 14, Roberts was paralyzed from the neck down. He used a special wheelchair with a respirator during the day and slept in an 800-pound iron lung at night. Despite his limitations, he continued his studies via telephone hookup, attending in person a few hours a week. His mom, Zona, encouraged him persevere despite the odds.

Roberts’s activism began in earnest as early as high school, when he was denied his diploma due to his inability to complete Physical Education (PE) and Driver's Ed. After petitioning, not only did he earn his diploma, he went on to college, becoming the first student with severe disabilities to attend the University of California, Berkeley. There, he led other Berkeley students with severe disabilities in creating the Physically Disabled Students Program, the first of its kind.

Roberts went on to earn his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in political science from Berkeley, and later returned to lead the Berkeley Center for Independent Living, which inspired many similar centers around the U.S. In 1976, Gov. Jerry Brown appointed him Director of the California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation, and in 1983 he co-founded the World Institute on Disability.

His mother Zona describes: “I watched Ed as he grew from a sports-loving kid, through  bleak days of hopelessness, into self-acceptance of his physical limitations as he learned what was possible for him to accomplish. His years at UCB were great ones as he both enjoyed his college status and got in touch with his leadership qualities. He took great pleasure in watching people with disabilities achieve greater acceptance.”

[renaeden]

Awesome.

[Gopher Gary]

Today's Google Doodle is Bessie Coleman’s 125th Birthday.




Bessie Coleman didn’t just chase her dreams – she soared after them.

Born in Texas to a family of 13 children, Coleman walked four miles each day to her segregated, one-room school. She was a proficient reader and excelled in math, and managed to balance her studies while helping her parents harvest cotton. Even from an early age, she had her sights set on something big.

At age 23, Coleman moved to Chicago where she worked two jobs in an effort to save enough money to enroll in aviation school. After working for five years, she moved to Paris to study, as no school in America would admit her due to her race and gender. Just a year later, Coleman became the first female pilot of African-American and Native American descent, and the first to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

In order to earn a living, Coleman made a plan to become a stunt pilot and perform for paying audiences. However, she was again denied enrollment in a stunt training program in the US, and in 1922, traveled to Europe where she completed her training in France and Germany.

Returning to the US, Coleman excelled at exhibition flying, performing complex stunts in flight for packed audiences. It was during this time that she acquired the nickname “Queen Bessie.” She was an adept, daring, and beloved pilot, until her untimely death at the age of 34.

Although Coleman didn’t live to fulfill her ultimate dream of starting an aviation school to train people of color, she inspired a generation. As Lieutenant William J. Powell writes, "Because of Bessie Coleman, we have overcome that which was worse than racial barriers. We have overcome the barriers within ourselves and dared to dream.”

Today’s Doodle honors Coleman on what would be her 125th birthday.

[Gopher Gary]

There's a few other interesting Google Doodles for other countries in the world today. Here's some more.

Lunar New Year 2017 (Hong Kong, Taiwan, China)



With firecrackers, fried dumplings, and Fai Chun, today’s Doodle welcomes the Year of the Rooster.

A time of celebration with family and friends, Lunar New Year falls on the first new moon between January 21 and February 20 each year. While this means the date is always changing, the traditions surrounding the holiday have long been the same. Leading up to it, families clean their homes to push out bad luck and make room for good fortune. Once New Year’s Eve arrives, loved ones come together for a reunion dinner where poon choi – a large dish packed with meat, fish, and vegetables – is often shared.

On New Year’s Day, red decor and envelopes abound, while lion dancers, paper lanterns, and fireworks fill the streets. Legend has it that many of these traditions stem from fending off the Nian, a mythical beast that would attack an ancient village each New Year’s Day. With the help of a mysterious old man, villagers discovered that the creature was afraid of the color red, as well as loud noises — and so the festivities began. Although the Nian never did return, the celebrations most certainly did.

Here’s to health, happiness, and good fortune in the new year!




India Republic Day 2017



Today is India’s Republic Day, commemorating 65 years of independence from British rule. While the country gained its freedom in August 1947, it wasn’t until January 26, 1950 that the Indian Constitution was signed into law, making India a republic under Purna Swaraj, or complete self-rule.

The day is celebrated with music and parades in the state capitols and a grand parade along the Rajpath in New Delhi. It is also on this day that the president addresses the nation and awards medals of achievement and bravery to military personnel, citizens, and children for acts of valor performed for India.



Australia Day 2017



Today’s Doodle celebrates Australia's most awe-inspiring feature: its big, blue backyard and treasured natural World Heritage Site: the Great Barrier Reef.

This vast underwater world is home to a whole host of protected and majestic creatures, including the green turtle, pipefish, barramundi cod, potato cod, maori wrasse, giant clam, and staghorn coral, to name a few. Made up of over 2,900 individual reefs, the earth’s largest coral reef system can be seen from space, and is our planet’s single largest structure made up of living organisms.

The reef is tightly woven into the culture and spirituality of island locals who cherished it long before it became a popular tourist destination. A large part of the reef is now under protection in an effort to preserve the shrinking ecosystem impacted by heavy tourism.

[renaeden]

Yay, Australia Day!

Or as Kayleigh calls it, Invasion Day.

[Gopher Gary]

Apparently Google thinks it's a day of honoring the reef. 

[Gopher Gary]

Today's Google Doodle is Lunar New Year 2017.


With traditional foods, glowing lanterns, and lots of red, today’s Doodle welcomes the Year of the Rooster.

A time of celebration with family and friends, Lunar New Year falls on the first new moon between January 21 and February 20 each year. While this means the date is always changing, the traditions surrounding the holiday have long been the same. In the US, Asian-American communities host festivals across the country – the oldest and largest of which is in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

At these events, red decor and envelopes abound, while lion dancers, giant puppets, and firecrackers fill the streets. Legend has it that many of these traditions stem from fending off the Nian, a mythical beast that would attack an ancient village each New Year’s Day. With the help of a mysterious old man, villagers discovered that the creature was afraid of the color red, as well as loud noises — and so the festivities began. Although the Nian never did return, the celebrations most certainly did.

Here’s to health, happiness, and good fortune in the new year!

[Gopher Gary]

Today's Google Doodle is Fred Korematsu's 98th Birthday.



Today Google’s US homepage is celebrating Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu, civil rights activist and survivor of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. January 30th, 2017 would have been his 98th birthday and is officially recognized as Fred Korematsu Day in California, Hawaii, Virginia and Florida.

A son of Japanese immigrant parents, Korematsu was born and raised in Oakland, California. After the U.S. entered WWII, he tried to enlist in the U.S. National Guard and Coast Guard, but was turned away due to his ethnicity.

He was 23 years old and working as a foreman in his hometown when Executive Order 9066 was signed in 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The order sent more than 115,000 people of Japanese descent living in the United States to incarceration.

Rather than voluntarily relocate to an internment camp, Korematsu went into hiding. He was arrested in 1942 and despite the help of organizations like ACLU, his conviction was upheld in the landmark Supreme Court case of Korematsu v. United States. Consequently, he and his family were sent to the the Central Utah War Relocation Center at Topaz, Utah until the end of WWII in 1945.

It wasn’t until 1976 that President Gerald Ford formally ended Executive Order 9066 and apologized for the internment, stating "We now know what we should have known then — not only was that evacuation wrong but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans.”

Fred Korematsu’s conviction was overturned in 1983 after evidence came to light that disputed the necessity of the internment. Five years later President Ronald Reagan signed the The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 citing "racial prejudice, wartime hysteria and a lack of political leadership" as the central motivation for Japanese internment.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton awarded Korematsu with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s most distinguished civilian award.

Fred Korematsu can be remembered fighting for civil rights and against prejudice throughout his life, famously saying:

"If you have the feeling that something is wrong, don't be afraid to speak up."

The doodle by artist Sophie Diao–herself a child of Asian immigrants–features a patriotic portrait of Korematsu wearing his Presidential Medal of Freedom, a scene of the internment camps to his back, surrounded by cherry blossoms, flowers that have come to be symbols of peace and friendship between the US and Japan.