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As Rhode Island's most famous lighthouse keeper, Lewis saved a number of lives from drowning, including the two soldiers that inspired the doodle. Today’s Google doodle marks the 175th birthday of Ida Lewis, a lighthouse keeper once hailed as “America’s Bravest Woman” for the numerous lives she saved from drowning. As the owner of the Lime Rock Lighthouse in Rhode Island, Google says Idawalley Zorada Lewis made her first save at the age of 12 and continued braving into the Newport harbor’s dangerous, cold waters to save drowning men and women all the way into her sixties. From the Google Doodle Blog: A lighthouse keeper required unwavering courage, sheer physical strength, constant diligence, and a willingness to put one’s own life on the line. Ida was so dedicated that supposedly she would rush into inclement weather without shoes or coat so as not a waste a single second. Her life and legacy were not only an honor to research and illustrate, but trul...

Designed by doodler Sophie Diao, the artwork pays homage to the March sisters -- Beth, Jo, Amy and Meg. Today’s Google doodle honors author Louisa May Alcott on the writer’s 184th birthday. While Alcott is best known for her novel, “Little Women,” she penned several novels during her lifetime, including two follow-ups to “Little Women” — “Little Men” and “Jo’s Boys.” In addition to writing classics, Alcott was known for her progressive ideals around feminism and was an abolitionist — working as a nurse at a Union hospital during the beginning of the Civil War. Growing up, Alcott’s home was a station for the Underground Railroad. The Louisa May Alcott doodle was designed by Sophie Diao and features the March sisters from “Little Women” — Beth, Jo, Amy and Meg. The doodle leads to a search for “Louisa May Alcott” and includes the usual sharing icon. “The March family of Little Women was based on Alcott’s own, and the coltish Jo was Louisa’s vision of herself: st...

Tuesday's Google Doodle celebrates the 434th anniversary of the Gregorian calendar In the year 1582, Oct. 4 was followed directly by Oct. 15 Tuesday’s Google Doodle celebrates the 434th anniversary of the Gregorian calendar, which was introduced on Oct. 4, 1582, by Pope Gregory XIII. The new calendar, introduced during the Renaissance, replaced the Roman Calendar that Julius Caesar had reformed in around 46 B.C. Before Caesar realigned the calendar, a Roman year had been 10 days shorter than a current year, and divided into lunar months. In order to keep the year in tune with the seasons, an extra month would be tacked on occasionally. Caesar noticed that Egyptians used a calendar based on the sun rather than the moon. So, in consultation with the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes, he decided to create his own new system, hoping to solve the problem of the drifting seasons. Each solar year in Caesar’s calendar became 365 days and six hours...

The search engine is celebrating the Hungarian's 117th birthday THE MAN who invented the ball point pen has been remembered on the Google homepage. To celebrate the 117th birthday of Ladislao José Biro, the search engine has created a special doodle for the Hungarian. GOOGLE Google Doodles have today celebrated the 117th birthday of Ladislao José Biro who invented the ballpoint pen PA:PRESS ASSOCIATION Biro was working as a journalist when he noticed ink used in newspaper printing dried a lot quicker Born in Budapest in 1899, Biro, was working as a journalist when he noticed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly, leaving the paper dry and smudge-free. He tried using the same ink in a fountain pen but the experiment did not seem to work. Not giving up Biro, developed a new tip consisting of a ball that was free to turn in a socket, and as it turned it would pick up ink from a cartridge and then roll to deposit it on the paper...

Google put out a special doodle today to mark is 18th birthday. The animated  Google doodle  , designed by Gerben Steenks, depicts the letter "G" as a balloon modeller, wearing a party hat and surrounded by confetti and streamers. The G blows up a long balloon and twists it into the letters "oogle", to complete the name of the search engine, before the balloon floats away and pulls the G with it. The doodle is being displayed on Google's homepage around the world on September 27. There's just one problem. While Google has celebrated its birthday on September 27 for the  past 10 years  , that hasn't always been the case. In 2005 Google published a birthday doodle on September 26, in 2004 it was put up on September 7, and in 2003 it was put it on 8 September. Getty According to Google's own  company history  ,  Google.com  was registered as a domain on 15 September 1997, and the company filed for incorporation on 4 September 19...

Google Google Doodle for Nettie Stevens' 155th Birthday. Her discovery of the XY chromosome system was a watershed moment in genetics That X and Y chromosomes combine to determine gender, now common knowledge taught in biology classes the world over, was discovered by pioneering American scientist Nettie Stevens. On what would have been her 155th birthday, Google is celebrating her immense contribution to the field of genetics with a Doodle. Stevens was born in Cavendish, Vt. in 1861, and grew up in an era where job opportunities for women were severely restricted. After studying at Stanford University, she got her PhD at Bryn Mawr College, where she did the bulk of the research that led to her breakthrough. Stevens died of breast cancer in 1912, but, as Google said, “her discovery lives on.”

Google The Doodle today celebrates what would be the famous birder's 85th birthday Doctors gave Phoebe Snetsinger a year to live when they diagnosed her with melanoma in 1981, she decided to spend her remaining time birding. In the next 18 years, she traveled across the world and ended up recording 8,393 species of birds. The Google Doodle today celebrates what would be Snetsigner’s 85th birthday with five birds, including the Blackburnian Warbler and Red-Shouldered Vanga (as the ‘G’ and the ‘o’) — both among those she sighted. Snetsinger had wanted to be a scientist, but married and lived in Minnesota until just before her 50th birthday, when she was diagnosed with cancer. She kept outliving expectations and taking increasingly dangerous journeys, suffering various injuries on trails and surviving a gang rape, eventually sighting a vast majority of the roughly 10,000 bird species in the world. At the time, she amassed the highest bird count in for a...

Today’s Google doodle celebrates German animator and film director Grace Lotte Reiniger on what would have been her 117th birthday. Reiniger is credited with creating the first full-length animated film, “The Adventures of Achmed.” She would go on to make more than 40 animated films spanning her career. Pre-dating Walt Disney by nearly a decade, Reiniger pioneered a style of animation that relied on thousands of photos of paper cut-out silhouettes arranged to tell a story. Google Doodle Blog A precursor to stop-motion filmmaking, Reiniger’s unique style of silhouette animation involved taking photos of paper cutouts arranged and moved ever so slightly, frame by frame, to create a filmed scene. The animated doodle was created by doodler Olivia Huynh and has been set to an original music composition by Silas Hite. According to the Google Doodle Blog, Huynh went to great lengths to create today’s doodle, building “… almost everything, from the puppets to the top-down came...

Keystone/Getty Images Claude Shannon, a mathematician at the Bell Telephone Laboratories, with an electronic mouse which has a 'super' memory and can learn its way around a maze without a mistake after only one "training" run. He transformed digital computing and electronic communication Claude Shannon, nicknamed “the father of information theory” for his work on digital computing and electronic communication, was also ajuggling unicyclist who would have turned 100 on Saturday. To mark his birthday and his achievements, Saturday’s Google Doodle honored Shannon, depicting him juggling a set of ones and zeroes, the numbers he used to transform computing after learning they could be used to represent words, pictures, videos and more. While he was a research assistant at MIT, Shannon drew from Boolean algebra to pioneer digital computing, using the value of “1” for circuits turned on, and the value of “0” for circuits that were off. Before Shannon moved ...

A Sussex scientist is the topic of the world-famous Google Doodle today (Thursday April 28). The Doodle appears at the top of Google’s search page and today marks the 162nd birthday of Hertha Marks Ayrton. A Google statement says: “Today we celebrate her legacy as engineer, mathematician, physicist, and inventor, her impact still rippling through the scientific community.” However, there’s some confusion over where in Sussex she died. A YouTube video, Wikipedia and some other websites says she died from blood poisoning on August 26 1923 at New Cottage, North Lancing. But other websites, including other Wikipedia pages, say she died in Bexhill. Wherever in the county she did pass away, her work is recognised as pioneering. She was an engineer, mathematician, physicist, and inventor and was awarded the Hughes Medal by the Royal Society for her work on electric arcs and ripples in sand and water.