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India's first passenger train journey is the subject of Tuesday's Google doodle. The day marks 160 years since the a passenger train set out on its maiden journey in India. The history of rail transport in India goes all the way back to 1832, when a plan for a rail system in India was first put forward. The first rail line in the Indian sub-continent came up near Chintadripet Bridge (in modern-day Chennai) in 1836 as an "experimental line". In 1837, a 5.6 km long rail line was established between Red Hills and the stone quarries near St. Thomas Mount. However, it wasn't until 1853-54, when two new railway companies, Great Indian Peninsular Railway (GIPR) and East Indian Railway (EIR), were created, that the railways as we known it today began to take shape. GIPR was asked to setup near Mumbai, and EIR was to setup a railway line near Kolkata (Calcutta at the time). Thus, the first train in India became opera...

New Delhi: Celebrating the 366th birthday of naturalist and scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian, Google has posted a doodle on its homepage. The doodle features caterpillars, chrysalises, moths, butterflies and a green iguana in conjunction with the specific plants upon which they feed. Born on April 2 1647 in Germany, Maria dedicated her life to the study and depiction of the metamorphosis of insects. She studied plants and insects and made elaborated paintings about them. Her detailed observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly laid the foundation for modern entomology. She was born into a family of artists and scholarly printers, Maria Sibylla was exposed to natural history publications at a young age. After her father's death, her mother married the still-life painter Jacob Marrel, who trained her as a flower painter. At the age of 13, Merian painted the transformation of silkworms into moths. This was the beginning of her pas...

New Delhi: Commemorating Miriam Makeba's 81st birthday, Google has posted a doodle. But who was Miriam Makeba? Here are some interesting facts about Miriam Makeba: 1. She came from humble beginnings in a shantytown near Johannesburg. The former domestic servant first started to sing in her school choir and learned new songs by listening to recordings of American jazz artists like Ella Fitzgerald. 2. "Throughout her life, Mama Makeba communicated a positive message to the world about the struggle of the people of South Africa and the certainty of victory over the dark forces of apartheid colonialism through the art of song," said Foreign Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma. Video Photo Gallery Commemorating Miriam Makeba's 81st birthday, Google has posted a doodle. But who was Miriam Makeba? Here are some interesting facts about Miriam Makeba. 3. Makeba spent 31 years in exile after speaking out against apartheid. One of her songs d...

Nicolaus Copernicus, mathematician and astronomer is the subject of Tuesday's Google doodle. Copernicus's work helped popularise the idea that Earth revolves around the Sun, instead of the other way round, as was commonly believed at the time, Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Thorn, in the province of Royal Prussia, in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. Copernicus completed his matriculation in 1491-92 Copernicus and began his studies at the Department of Arts during the heyday of the Krakow astronomical-mathematical school, which laid the foundations for his subsequent mathematical achievements. Copernicus became a pupil of the famous Albert Brudzewski, who was the first to state that the Moon moves in an ellipse and always shows its same side to the Earth, and was as established name in astronomy during the time. Nicolaus Copernicus did not graduate from the college, and later enrolled at a university in Bolgona, Italy. He stayed in Ital...

Mary Leakey is being honored with a Google doodle in parts of the world where it is already February 6th (like Australia). Leakey was a British archaeologist and anthropologist, who discovered the first fossilized Proconsul (extinct ape believed to be ancestral to humans) skull. She also discovered the Zinjanthropus (Paranthropus, a genus of extinct hominins) skull. Leakey was born on February 6, 1913, which obviously, makes this her 100th birthday. She died in 1996 at the age of 83. Here’s a look at Google’s Knowledge Panel for Leakey: Simon Rüger shared this doodle video with us: Google has run a number of other doodles already this week in different parts of the world. There were at least four on Monday, including the Canadian penny , Sri Lanka Independence Day , Josef Kajetán Tyl and Manuel Álvarez Bravo . ...

Google has featured a multi-part doodle on its homepage as a tribute on the 200th anniversary of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Grimm's Fairy Tales is the popular name of a 19th century German book called Children's and Household Tales ( Kinder und Hausmärchen in German). The book was written by German brothers Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm and Wilhelm Carl Grimm. In Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Grimm brothers collected many of Europe's most popular fairy tales including Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, The Frog-Price, Goldilocks And The Three Bears, Rapunzel, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Rumpelstiltskin and many, many others. The first volume of the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales  was published in 1812 containing 86 stories; the second volume of 70 stories followed in 1814. The seventh and final edition under the brothers' watch was published in 1857 and it contained 211 stories split across two volumes. These editions were extensive...

New Delhi: From the first program that Ada Lovelace created for the Analytical Engine to present day laptops and tablet PCs, Google has doodled the evolution of computers on the occasion of the world's first computer programmer's 197th birth anniversary. The doodle shows Ada Lovelace writing the pioneering computer program with a quill pen seated on a desk and the paper scroll she is writing her algorithm on twirls in the shape of the letters of the Google logo. Ada King, the countess of Lovelace, was born on December 10, 1815 in Piccadilly Terrace, Middlesex, England and was the daughter of the famous poet Lord Byron, but as her parents separated soon after her birth and she did not get to know her father well. Video Photo Gallery The Google doodle shows Ada Lovelace writing the pioneering computer programs with a quill pen. Her original name was Augusta Ada Byron and on her marriage to William King she became Ada King and later her husband...