Ida Lewis Google Doodle. 175th Birthday of Brave Lighthouse Keeper

Known for: heroic rescues at sea

Occupation: lighthouse keeper

Dates: February 25, 1842 - October 25, 1911

Also known as: Idawalley Zorada Lewis, Ida Lewis-Wilson

Ida Lewis was born in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest of four children of Captain Hosea Lewis of the Revenue Cutter Service.

Her father was transferred to the Lighthouse Service and appointed keeper of Lime Rock Light on Lime Rock in Newport in 1854, taking his family to live on the rock in 1857

Ida expanded her domestic duties to include caring for him and a seriously ill sister and also, with her mother's assistance, tending the light: filling the lamp with oil at sundown and again at midnight, trimming the wick, polishing carbon off the reflectors, and extinguishing the light at dawn.

Ida and her mother tended the Lime Rock Light for her father from 1857 until 1873, when he died.


Lewis made her first rescue in 1854, coming to the assistance of four men whose boat had capsized. She was 12 years old.

On July 16, 1881, she was awarded the rare and prestigious Gold Lifesaving Medal from the United States government for her daring rescue on February 4, 1881, of two soldiers from Fort Adams who had fallen through the ice while attempting to return to the fort on foot

Lewis died of a stroke on October 24, 1911, at the age of 69.

 Ida Lewis was buried in the Common Burying Ground in a prominent location so her grave can be seen by passers by.

The folk song "Lighthouse Keeper" by Neptune's Car was inspired by Lewis's experiences.

In 2017, Google Doodle commemorated Ida Lewis 175th birthday.

Exoplanet discovery Google Doodle. Celebrating Discovery of TRAPPIST-1 with 7 Earth-size Planets

Exoplanets: planets that exist orbiting stars other than our own sun or extrasolar planets are the planets that orbit stars other than our own sun or that wander without the benefit of a star to shine on them

Feb 23 2017 Google celebrate exoplanet discovery with doodle

Astronomers estimate that there could be trillions of planets around other stars.

The densest exoplanet discovered to date is the planet Janssen (55 Cancri e). This planet also has a year of just less than 18 hours.

The known exoplanets fall along a range of sizes, masses, and orbital positions.

Exoplanets are so much further away than Pluto, that astronomers really need additional help to see them.

The United States is just one of many countries working to locate exoplanets. 

CoRoT found its first exoplanet in 2007.

Most exoplanets can only be detected indirectly because bright light from the stars that they orbit drowns them out.

The region around a star where liquid water could exist on the surface of a solid planet is called the habitable zone. 

The most massive exoplanet was only discovered in February 2011. This is the planet CD-35 2722b in orbit around its parent star CD-35 2722.

Astronomers group types of exoplanets as follows: Earth-size, Earth-like, Super-Jupiters, gas giants, rocky worlds the size of Earth, rocky giants, Super-Earths, mini-Neptunes, and gas dwarfs.

A few exoplanets have been found that have orbits more like those of the planets in our solar system.

What is a pangolin? Valentine's Day 2017 (Day 1) Google Doodle

Pangolins, often called “scaly anteaters,” are covered in tough, overlapping scales. 

The prehistoric pangolin, which walks on its hind legs due to the length and curvature of its impressive claws

These burrowing mammals eat ants and termites using an extraordinarily long, sticky tongue, and are able to quickly roll themselves up into a tight ball when threatened.

the humble pangolin looks more like an anteater prepped for medieval battle than an animal under threat.

Pangolin species vary in size from about 1.6kg (~3.5 lbs) to a maximum of about 33kg (~73 lbs). 

In response to the pangolin's plight, numerous campaigns have been launched to raise awareness, including the SavePangolins organisation and an app, Roll with the Pangolins, which was endorsed by Prince William in his role as President of United for Wildlife.

They vary in color from light to yellowish brown through olive to dark brown

Sunda pangolin, a species distributed throughout South East Asia, as one of his ten favourite species he would 'save' from extinction.

Unlike African pangolins, Asian pangolins also have thick bristles that emerge from between their scales

There are eight species of pangolin

The search engine Google is showing this playable Doodle for the Day 1 of Valentine's Day 2017 Doodles series.

Celebrating Edmonia Lewis Google Doodle

Edmonia Lewis was an American sculptor who worked for most of her career in Rome, Italy.

Born: July 4, 1844, East Greenbush, New York, United States

Died: September 17, 1907, London, United Kingdom

The Search Engine Google will be showing this Doodle in few countries on February 1st for Celebrating Edmonia Lewis

She is the first woman of African-American and Native American heritage to achieve international fame and recognition as a sculptor in the fine arts world.

Her work is known for incorporating themes relating to black and American Indian people into Neoclassical style sculpture.

She emerged during the crisis-filled days of the Civil War, and by the end of the 19th century.

She was the only black woman who had participated in and been recognized to any degree by the American artistic mainstream.

Her father was an Afro-Haitian, while her mother was of Mississauga Ojibwe and African-American descent

Lewis's mother was known as an excellent weaver and craftswoman, while her father was a gentleman's servant.

Her family background inspired Lewis in her later work.

By the time Lewis reached the age of nine, both of her parents had died. Her two maternal aunts adopted Lewis and her older brother Samuel, who was born in 1832.

The children remained with their aunts near Niagara Falls for approximately the next four years.

After college, Lewis moved to Boston in early 1864, where she began to pursue her career as a sculptor.

Lewis was inspired by the lives of abolitionists and Civil War heroes. Her subjects in 1863 and 1864 included some of the most famous abolitionists of her day: John Brown and Colonel Robert Gould Shaw

From 1864 to 1871, Lewis was written about or interviewed by Lydia Maria Child, Elizabeth Peabody, Anna Quincy Waterston, and Laura Curtis Bullard.

For years, the year of Edmonia Lewis's death was speculated to be 1911 in Rome. An alternative view held that she died in Marin County, California, and was buried in an unmarked grave in San Francisco.

Google celebrate Fred Korematsu's 98th Birthday with doodle

Born: January 30, 1919, Oakland, California, United States

Died: March 30, 2005, Marin County, California, United States

Cause of death: Respiratory failure

Spouse: Kathryn Pearson (m. 1946–2005)

Education: Castlemont Community of Small Schools

Parents: Kotsui Aoki, Kakusaburo Korematsu

Children: Karen Korematsu

Today Google’s US homepage is celebrating Fred T. Korematsu, a 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 22 years old and working as a foreman in his hometown when Executive Order 9066 was signed in 1942 by U.S President Franklin D. 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 U.S 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.”

Ed Roberts activist Google Doodle

Edward Verne Roberts was an American activist.

Born: January 23, 1939, San Mateo, California, United States

Died: March 14, 1995, Berkeley, California, United States

Education: University of California, Berkeley

Awards: MacArthur Fellowship

He was the first student with severe disabilities to attend the University of California, Berkeley

 He was a pioneering leader of the disability rights movement

Roberts contracted polio at the age of fourteen in 1953, two years before the Salk vaccine ended the epidemic.

 He spent eighteen months in hospitals, and returned home paralyzed from the neck down except for two fingers on one hand and several toes.

He slept in an iron lung at night and often rested there during the day.

When out of the lung he survived by "frog breathing," a technique for swallowing air using facial and neck muscles.

Ed Roberts is often called the father of the Independent Living movement

In 2017, on his 78th birthday, Roberts was honored with a Google Doodle in recognition of his activism

Ed Roberts is highlighted in Joseph Shapiro's 1993 book, No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement.

Roberts died on March 14, 1995, at the age of 56 from cardiac arrest.

Sandford Fleming’s 190th Birthday Google Doodle

Born: January 7, 1827, Kirkcaldy, United Kingdom
Died: July 22, 1915, Halifax, Canada

Sir Sandford Fleming, KCMG was a Canadian engineer and inventor. Born and raised in Scotland, he emigrated to colonial Canada at the age of 18

It was Ireland in 1876 when a mistake printed in a timetable caused Sandford Fleming to miss his train but alter time as we know it.

Historically, regions used solar time to set their own clocks. It worked well enough until trains came along and the need for standardized time arose, which brings us back to Fleming.

Following his missed train, Fleming—a Canadian inventor and engineer of Scottish birth—proposed a worldwide standard time at a meeting of the Royal Canadian Institute on February, 8, 1879. He advocated for dividing the world into 24 time zones beginning at the Greenwich Meridian and spaced at 15 degree intervals.

His proposal gave way to the International Prime Meridian Conference which convened in 1884 and was attended by 25 nations. It was here that Fleming’s system of international standard time was adopted.

Fleming was also known for helping build the Intercontinental Railway, serving as chief engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and designing Canada’s first postage stamp.