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Google Doodle Ferris Wheel and Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2013

By Paul Thomson :: 12:41 AM

Doodle celebrates Valentine's Day and Ferris Wheel inventor.Happy Valentine’s Day. Google has decided to celebrate with a dual-themed Google Doodle on the homepage of the search engine site today – honoring both Valentine’s day, and the 154th birthday of Ferris Wheel inventor George Ferris.

A cute interactive doodle, pressing the heart button will spin the dual Ferris Wheels and pair up an unsuspecting and unusual duo of adorable animal friends – a duck and an octopus, for example. After the match up, users are treated to a sweet comic depicting the two animals on a Valentine’s Day date – in the case of our eight-legged octopus friend, he’s trying to seduce the duck with multiple boom-boxes in his arms, just like John Cusack in the 80’s hit movie “Say Anything.”

If you don’t yet see the doodle on your Google front page, don’t despair – it’s being rolled out as it hits midnight on the 14th across the globe.

The doodle also honors engineer Ferris, who was born on February 14, 1859, and created the original Ferris Wheel for the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition.

Ferris’ original contraption was outfitted with 36 cars, each with 40 revolving chairs and able to hold up to 60 people, giving a total capacity of 2,160. When the exposition opened, it carried about 38,000 passengers each day, taking 20 minutes to complete two revolutions, the first involving a series of stops to allow passengers to enter and exit. The price of the ride was 50 cents, and the original wheel carried 2 and a half million passengers before it was demolished in 1906. Ferris died on November 22, 1896.

Filed under → Celebrity, Games, Google, Social Media