Today on Google's home page is a special colorful logo for the 220th birthday of Gioachino Rossini. His songs are incredibly well known but his name is not.
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an italian composer born on February 29, 1792. He was born in Italy into a family of musicians. He died at the age of 76 on Friday, November 13, 1868 from pneumonia and was buried in Paris, France.
How well known was his music? Well, listen to the clips below:
The frogs in the logo are inspired by the The Barber of Seville but if you take a closer look at the logo and hover your mouse over it, you will see Google used frogs because it is also a leap year.
Today is the 29th of February, so it is a leap day. Gioachino Rossini was born on a leap day. A leap day happens about every 4 years, i.e. 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016. But there are exceptions, the year has to be divisible by 4 but not 100.
In any event, Google combined the logo for the leap day and Gioachino Rossini into one.
Forum discussion at Google Blogoscoped Forums.