Google celebrates Nelson Mandela’s 96th Birth Anniversary with a Doodle.

18 July 2014 :: Google celebrated former South African president, Nelson Mandela’s 96th Birth Anniversary with a Doodle. The interactive doodle showcases different stages of Mandela’s life, along with quotes from his autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician and philanthropist who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was South Africa’s first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election.

Mandela was born on 18 July 1918 in the village of Mvezo in Umtata, then a part of South Africa’s Cape Province. Given the forename Rolihlahla, a Xhosa term colloquially meaning “troublemaker”, in later years he became known by his clan name, Madiba. His patrilineal great-grandfather, Ngubengcuka, was ruler of the Thembu people in the Transkeian Territories of South Africa’s modern Eastern Cape province.

The doodle shows a picture of Nelson Mandela amidst flowers with the second ‘O’ being the frame around Mandela’s picture, with the quote, “No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion.”

The next Slide shows Mandela walking into his home in the village, with the quote “People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite,”

The third slide shows a boy standing at his doorstep, with a girl standing at the window of the same house, with the quote, “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead,”

The fourth slide shows Nelson Mandela in prison during his long 27 year sentence, reading. The accompanying quote in this slide reads, “Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.”

The Fifth slide shows Mandela making his famous speech at Johannesburg to placate the violence that had broken out and threatened to take South Africa back into civil war and international isolation. The quote in this slide reads, “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

The last slide has a image of Nelson Mandela on the right, with the words, “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time you fall,” written alongside.

 Mandela died last year, on 5 December, after suffering from a pulmonary infection.