Google Celebrates Fanny Blankers-Koen’s 100th Birthday

Francina “Fanny” Elsje Blankers-Koen was a Dutch athlete, best known for winning four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She accomplished this as a 30-year-old mother of two, during a time when many disregarded women’s athletics.

Google Celebrates Fanny Blankers-Koen’s 100th Birthday with doodle on April 26, 2018.

Her background and performances earned her the nickname “the Flying Housewife“. She was the most successful athlete at the 1948 Summer Olympics.

Having started competing in athletics in 1935, she took part in the 1936 Summer Olympics a year later. Although international competition was eliminated by World War II, Blankers-Koen set several world records during that period, in events as diverse as the long jump, the high jump, and sprint and hurdling events.

Apart from her four Olympic titles, she won five European titles and 58 Dutch championships, and set or tied 12 world records – the last, pentathlon, in 1951 aged 33.

Elizabeth Blackwell’s 197th Birthday Google Doodle

Elizabeth Blackwell was a British-born physician, notable as the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, as well as the first woman on the UK Medical Register.

Google celebrates Elizabeth Blackwell’s 197th Birthday with doodle on Feb 3, 2018.

Elizabeth was born on 3 February 1821 in a house on Dicksons Street in Bristol, Gloucestershire, England, to Samuel Blackwell, a sugar refiner, and his wife Hannah (Lane) Blackwell.

She was the first woman to graduate from medical school, a pioneer in promoting the education of women in medicine in the United States, and a social and moral reformer in both the United States and in the United Kingdom.

In October 1847, Blackwell was accepted as a medical student by Hobart College, then called Geneva Medical College, located in upstate New York.

On 4 November 1849, when Blackwell was treating an infant with ophthalmia neonatorum, she spurted some contaminated solution into her own eye accidentally, and contracted the infection. She lost sight in her left eye, causing her to have her eye surgically extracted and thus lost all hope of becoming a surgeon.

In 1895, she published her autobiography, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women. It was not very successful, selling fewer than 500 volumes.

In 1907, while holidaying in Kilmun, Scotland, Blackwell fell down a flight of stairs, and was left almost completely mentally and physically disabled. On 31 May 1910, she died at her home in Hastings, Sussex, after suffering a stroke that paralyzed half her body.

Her ashes were buried in the graveyard of St Munn’s Parish Church, Kilmun, and obituaries honouring her appeared in publications such as The Lancet and The British Medical Journal.

The British artist Edith Holden, whose Unitarian family were Blackwell’s relatives, was given the middle name “Blackwell” in her honor.

Read more at http://www.rtoz.org/2018/02/03/elizabeth-blackwells-197th-birthday-google-doodle/

Elizabeth Blackwell Quotes

Virginia Woolf’s 136th birthday Google Doodle

The Search Engine Google is showing Doodle in many Countries for Virginia Woolf’s 136th birthday.

Virginia Woolf was an English writer who is considered one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.

Born in an affluent household in Kensington, London, she attended the King's College London and was acquainted with the early reformers of women's higher education.

Having been home-schooled for the most part of her childhood, mostly in English classics and Victorian literature, Woolf began writing professionally in 1900.

During the interwar period, Woolf was a significant figure in London literary society and a central figure in the influential Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals. She published her first novel titled The Voyage Out in 1915, through the Hogarth Press, a publishing house that she established with her husband, Leonard Woolf.

Her best-known works include the novels Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927) and Orlando (1928), and the book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929), with its dictum, "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction."

Woolf became one of the central subjects of the 1970s movement of feminist criticism, and her works have since garnered much attention and widespread commentary for "inspiring feminism", an aspect of her writing that was unheralded earlier.

Her works are widely read all over the world and have been translated into more than fifty languages.

She suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life and took her own life by drowning in 1941 at the age of 59.

Read more details at http://www.rtoz.org/2018/01/24/virginia-woolfs-136th-birthday-google-doodle/

Virginia Woolf Quotes 

Fearless Nadia’s 110th Birthday Google Doodle

Mary Ann Evans, also known by her married name Mary Evans Wadia and her stage name Fearless Nadia (8 January 1908 – 9 January 1996) was an actress and stuntwoman, who is most remembered as the masked, cloaked adventurer in Hunterwali (Woman with a whip) released in 1935, which was one of the earliest female-lead Indian films.

The Search Engine Google is showing Doodle in India for Fearless Nadia’s 110th Birthday on Jan 8, 2018.

Fearless Nadia was born as Mary Ann Evans on 8 January 1908 in Perth, Western Australia. She was the daughter of Scotsman Herbertt Evans, a volunteer in the British Army, and Margret. They lived in Australia, before coming to India. Mary was one year old when Herbertt's regiment was seconded to Bombay. Mary came to Bombay in 1913 at the age of five with her father.

She had earlier tried her hand at a job in the Army & Navy Store in Bombay as a salesgirl and had at one point wanted to learn "short-hand and typing to get a better job". 

She toured India as a theatre artist and began working for Zarko Circus in 1930. She was introduced to Hindi films by Jamshed "J.B.H." Wadia who was the founder of Wadia Movietone, the behemoth of stunts and action in 1930s Bombay. 

In 1993, Nadia's great grandnephew, Riyad Vinci Wadia, made a documentary of her life and films, called Fearless: The Hunterwali Story. After watching the documentary at the 1993 Berlin International Film Festival, Dorothee Wenner, a German freelance writer, and film curator, wrote Fearless Nadia - The true story of Bollywood's original stunt queen, which was subsequently translated into English in 2005.

Vishal Bharadwaj's Hindi movie Rangoon supposedly portrays her life and times with Kangana Ranaut playing her role. Nadia married Homi Wadia in 1961 and thus became Nadia Wadia.

Her first film as a lead, Hunterwali, was a huge success. Nadia’s movies always had a cause – emancipation of women, social injustice or corruption. With each blockbuster, her stunts got more dangerous. She performed them without safety measures or even health insurance. 

She led a happy and successful life, barring a rough patch when she was battling alcoholism. In her 50s, she married Homi Wadia after the death of the latter’s mother, who didn’t approve of Homi marrying a non-Parsi.

She also had a son in 1926 named Robert Jones. While the name of the father was never disclosed, Robert (who was nicknamed Bobby) was introduced as her cousin or her brother. It was only after her husband Homi officially adopted Bobby did they acknowledge their relationship. Saif Ali Khan’s character seems to be loosely based on Homi.

Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa’s 113th Birthday Google Doodle

Kuppalli Venkatappa Puttappa popularly known by the nickname Kuvempu or by K. V. Puttappa, was an Indian Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Critic and Thinker.

He is widely regarded as the greatest Kannada Poet of the 20th century. He is the first among Kannada writers to be decorated with the prestigious Jnanapith Award.

The Search Engine Google is showing Doodle in India for Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa’s 113th Birthday on Dec 29, 2017.

Kuvempu studied at Mysore University in 1920’s, taught there for nearly 3 decades and rose to be Vice-Chancellor of the University (1956-60). He initiated Teaching in Kannada Medium.

For his contributions to Kannada Literature, the Government of Karnataka decorated him with the honorific Rashtrakavi (“National Poet”) in 1958 and Karnataka Ratna (“Gem of Karnataka”) in 1992.

His epic narrative Sri Ramayana Darshanam, a modern rendering of the Indian Hindu epic Ramayana is regarded as the revival of the era of Mahakavya (“Great Epic poetry”) in contemporary form and charm. His writings and his contribution to “Universal Humanism” (in his own words, “Vishwa maanavataa Vaada”) gives him a unique place in modern Indian literature.

He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan by Government of India in 1988. He penned the Karnataka State Anthem Jaya Bharata Jananiya Tanujate.

Read more at http://www.rtoz.org/2017/12/29/kuppali-venkatappa-puttappas-113th-birthday-google-doodle/

December global festivities | Holidays 2017

The Search Engine Google is showing a slideshow doodle in many countries for the December global festivities. It is the Day 1 Doodle from the series of Doodles to be shown for the Holidays 2017.

Google are beginning the countdown to Christmas with a festive series of Doodles, beginning on Monday, December 18.

Interactive, animated images feature penguins and parrots arranging to spend the big day together.

In the comic strip, a pair of 'slippery-footed siblings' are gearing up for the holidays as they can be seen talking to their 'warm weather relative' over phone.

In the next image, the penguins are seen packing their bags inside their icy igloo. The final panel hint at the series' next installments - Dec. 25, Christmas Day, Dec. 31, New Year's Eve, and finally, Jan. 1, New Year's Day.

Solar Eclipse Science Google Doodle

A solar eclipse (as seen from the planet Earth) is a type of eclipse that occurs when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth, and when the Moon fully or partially blocks (“occults”) the Sun. 

This can happen only at new moon when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction as seen from Earth in an alignment referred to as syzygy. In a total eclipse, the disk of the Sun is fully obscured by the Moon. In partial and annular eclipses, only part of the Sun is obscured

There are two kinds of eclipses. lunar and solar. In a solar eclipse, the moon comes between Earth and the Sun, casting a shadow on the surface of Earth.A lunar eclipse occurs when Earth comes between the sun and a full moon, blocking light from the sun and casting a shadow on the surface of the moon.

Eclipses affect animals too: the sudden darkness and resulting drop in temperature during a total solar eclipse can cause critters to behave as it it were dusk.

The Search Engine Google is showing an animated Doodle in United States for the Great American Eclipse 2017

Skywatchers on the American continent today are in for a special astronomical treat: front row seats to a total solar eclipse. An eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the earth, blocking the light of the sun from reaching us. 

While eclipses aren’t rare, a total eclipse, when viewers from Earth are at the very center of the moon’s shadow, only happens once every 18 months. To see one requires you to be in just the right place on earth, and a total eclipse in the same location only happens every 375 years on average.

Read more about solar eclipse at http://www.rtoz.org/2017/08/21/solar-eclipse-2017-google-doodle/