Happy Birthday Hans Christian Ørsted

Hans Christian Ørsted (b. 14 August 1777 in Rudkøbing, Denmark, d. 9 March 1851 in Copenhagen) was a Danish physicist and chemist who is best known for discovering that electric currents can induce magnetic fields, which is an important part of electromagnetism. He shaped post-Kantian philosophy and advances in science throughout the late 19th century.^[1]

Ørsted founded Selskabet for Naturlærens Udbredelse (SNU), a society to disseminate knowledge of the natural sciences. He was also the founder of predecessor organizations that eventually became the Danish Meteorological Institute and the Danish Patent and Trademark Office. Ørsted was the first modern thinker to explicitly describe and name the thought experiment.

A leader of the so-called Danish Golden Age, Ørsted was a close friend of Hans Christian Andersen and the brother of politician and jurist Anders Sandøe Ørsted, who eventually served as Danish prime minister (1853-54).

Alexander Puskin, a Russian author

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (June 6 [O.S. May 26] 1799–February 10 [O.S. January 29] 1837) was a Russian author of the Romantic erawho is considered to be the greatest Russian poetand the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin pioneered the use of vernacular speech in his poems and plays, creating a style of storytelling—mixing drama, romance, and satire—associated with Russian literature ever since and greatly influencing later Russian writers.

Here is Google Russia’s logo for the day

Click on the logo for more information

100th Anniversary of Japanese Immigration in Brazil

June 18th, 2008 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of Japanese immigration in Brazil.

According to the Portuguese language Wikipedia-

The Kasato Maru is considered the first ship to arrive in Brazil with Japanese immigrants, on June 18, 1908. It arrived in the Port of Santos bringing 165 families that came to work on the coffee plantations in the state of Sao Paulo.

The following picture is of the Liberdade neighborhood in downtown Sao Paulo. It is the Japan-town of Sao Paulo.

The following is the image on Google Brasil’s site:

Happy Birthday Diego Velázquez

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (June 6, 1599 – August 6, 1660), commonly referred to as Diego Velázquez, was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary baroque period, important as a portrait artist. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family, other notable European figures, and commoners, culminating in the production of his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656).

From the first quarter of the nineteenth century, Velázquez’s artwork was a model for the realist and impressionist painters, in particular Édouard Manet. Since that time, more modern artists, including Spain’s Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí, as well as the Anglo-Irish painter Francis Bacon, have paid tribute to Velázquez by recreating several of his most famous works.

Source: Wikipedia

Google is commemorating the event with this logo:

Happy Birthday- Alexander Graham Bell

Google today is sporting this image-

From Wikipedia-

Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 – 2 August 1922) was an eminent scientist, inventor and innovator. Most often associated with the invention of the telephone, Bell was also called “the father of the deaf“.^[1] His father, grandfather and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell’s life’s work.^[2] His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices that eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Graham_Bell

Happy 50th Birthday to the Lego!

This is Google’s Lego Logo for today.