Google celebrating Mark Twain's birthday by Google Doodle

Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835 – 1910) most prominently known by his pen name Mark Twain would have enjoyed his 176th birthday today if he had been alive. So What! Google is doing the job by following up by celebrating Mark Twain's 176th birthday with a panoramic Doodle depicting one of the most famous characters he created, Tom Sawyer.

"I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it," Twain wrote in his autobiography. "It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'"

Indeed, Twain died the day after the next Halley's Comet passing, named after astronomer Edmond Halley. The "freaks" were reunited by Google, though unfortunately the Halley's Comet Doodle only appeared in the UK, whereas Twain's Tom Sawyer Doodle appeared globally on Google's homepage today. The panoramic doodle of Tom getting others to do his work captures a Norman Rockwell like view of America. Tom's whitewashed fence is also a telling Google Doodle, as it captures how Google loves having others help them do their work.

It is really a thingking by google for a man who was more than modern by his time. Many think Twain was like Hank Morgan, the visitor from the future in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court." A consummate early adopter, Twain was among the first writers to use a typewriter. He also boasted that he was the first person in his part of New England to have a telephone in his house. If Mark Twain were alive today, he'd be using the voice command feature on his iPhone to update his Twitter feed while riding in a Google-piloted Tesla Roadster. Hope that his birthday would be the begining of lots of more most modern Mark Twains.

Google Doodle marking the 176th birthday of Mark Twain

Mark Twain's statue