A lot of others were wondering the same thing. For example, here are a couple of the comments we got:

“So how exactly did u get the recording of its size without making it melt?”

“Someone could have bulls**tted the whole story with a made up sketch, fake measurements and false claims. You dont know, i dont know, theres no telling if this even really happened….”

According to Wikipedia, which Google presented as the top organic result when clicking on the doodle, in the snowflake was observed in 1887 at 38 centimeters (15 in) in diameter in Fort Keogh, Montana.

The Wikipedia entry cites: Lyons, Walter A (1997). The Handy Weather Answer Book (2nd ed.). Detroit, Michigan: Visible Ink press. ISBN 0-7876-1034-8.

I dug up a New York Times article from 2007, which references the same snowflake, noting that it’s listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, and that the snowflake was measured by a nearby rancher, who described the flakes falling in the storm which produced the flake in question, as “larger than milk pans”. It also says that there was no corroborating evidence to support the rancher’s claim.

I’m having a hard time finding anything about the record on Guinness’ site, but here are some other interesting snow-related records.

Here’s an interesting excerpt from that NYT article:

“Who of us has seen a hailstone the size of a golf ball or a baseball?” asked Kenneth G. Libbrecht, a snowflake devotee at the California Institute of Technology who runs the physics department there in his spare time. “But, clearly, they exist, because people pull them out of their freezers. Some of these things can be very, very rare, but not impossible.”

The laws of physics, he said, suggest no obvious restrictions on the size of very large flakes. But in the real world, Dr. Libbrecht added, wind might break up the fragile compilations, putting an effective size limit on what flutters down from the sky.

tagSEOBlog uploaded the following video demonstrating the animation (hat tip to Barry Schwartz):

The doodle was created by artist Faith Ringgold. Here’s the bio she uses on her site:

Faith Ringgold, began her artistic career more than 35 years ago as a painter. Today, she is best known for her painted story quilts — art that combines painting, quilted fabric and storytelling. She has exhibited in major museums in the USA, Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is in the permanent collection of many museums including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art. Her first book,Tar Beach was a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration, among numerous other honors. She has written and illustrated eleven children’s books. She has received more than 75 awards, fellowships, citations and honors, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship for painting, two National Endowment for the Arts Awards and seventeen honorary doctorates, one of which is from her alma mater The City College of New York.

Faith Ringgold is married to Burdette Ringgold and has two daughters, Michele and Barbara Wallace; and three granddaughters, Faith, Theodora and Martha. She is a professor of art at the University of California in San Diego, California.

Here’s what Google’s doodle for the day looked like last year:

What do you think of the new doodle? Which do you like better?

Though he is known as one of the founders of both modern stratigraphy and modern geology, his scientific contributions have also lent themselves to paleontology, crystallography and even anatomy (he is credited with the discovery of the duct of the parotid salivary gland) in the heads of dogs, rabbits and sheep.

In stratigraphy, he’s credited with the law of superposition, the principle of original horizontality and the principle of lateral continuity.

He is perhaps known best for his work with fossils and figuring out that rocks that were shaped like shark teeth were actually fossilized shark teeth.

By the way, Google is also advertising “Search plus Your World” on Google.com, as you can see in the lead image.

It’s the hundred birthday of creator Charles Addams, an American cartoonist who introduced the world to these characters in the 30s, with cartoons originally appearing in The New Yorker. Eventually, of course, the characters would come to life on Television, and later still, in film.

Addams died in 1988 of a heart attack at 76.

For the doodle itself, Google credits The Tee & Charles Addams Foundation (where the above image came from as well).

Note: The foundation’s site appears to be currently experiencing the doodle effect, and is experiencing periods of downtime.

And there have been some pretty great Doodles in 2011. Of course everyone has a different opinion on which Doodles are the best, just like folks have a difference of opinion on any sort of artwork. That obviously means that this “best of” list is nowhere near objective – these are definitely my opinions (and remember, I’m American!). Having said that, I think that the following list is a fairly comprehensive list of some of the better attempts this year.

So let’s get to it (in no particular order):

Google honored the 164th birthday of the great American inventor Thomas Edison. The Doodle was animated, featuring a telegraph machine that types out “G” in morse code as well as a glowing light bulb.

The 183rd birthday of the author Jules Verne was celebrated with an interactive Doodle that allowed users to navigate 20,000 leagues under the sea. You can play around with it in full view HD here.

Charlie Chaplin’s birthday got some special treatment, as Google unveiled a short video of a Chaplin-lookalike interacting with a Google logo.

Google honored the 226th birthday of “Birds of America” author John James Audubon with one of the prettier Doodles of the year. It was also one of the most abstract, as much of the lettering is a little tough to make out.

One of my favorite offerings of 2011 was the set of Roger Hargreaves Doodles. The “Mr. Happy” and “Little Miss Sunshine” author received 16 different Doodles, portraying various characters from his beloved children’s books. See them all in the video below:

The now famous Les Paul Google Doodle allowed you to not only interact with a guitar, but record your songs as well. This led to numerous YouTube videos of people playing famous songs using the playable Doodle, and it turned out to be a major productivity killer. This Doodle was probably the most popular one of the entire year.

Legendary humorist Mark Twain received a massive Doodle fit for widescreen. The Doodle portrayed a few instances from a famous scene from his novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Why do the work when you can trick other into doing it for you?

Modern dance pioneer Martha Graham received one of the most buzzed-about Doodles of the year. The animated Doodle takes us through five famous dances from her career – and is truly a pleasure to watch.

Another abstract Doodle comes from Turkey’s National Sovereignty and Children’s Day. Toys are aligned to form the subtle resemblance of the famous Google logo.

This Doodle for Jordan Independence Day is just beautiful:

The Freddie Mercury Google Doodle needs no description. Just pure, unadulterated awesome.

Another wonderful interactive Doodle celebrated Gumby creator Art Clokey. The Doodle featured all the favorite characters from The Gumby Show – The first “G” is a block, and the first “O” morphs into Gumby’s nemeses, the Blockheads. The second “O” turns into Prickle, the yellow dinosaur. The second “G” is Goo, a flying blue mermaid. The “L” is Gumby himself and the final “E” is his sidekick Pokey the pony.

A recent Doodle that ran in Switzerland, Austria and Germany honored the 83rd birthday of Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser. His unmistakeable design is seen in the Doodle, which highlights some of his most famous architectural accomplishments.

What were your favorite Doodles of 2011? I’m sure I overlooked some great ones – so call me on it. Did I make any egregious omissions? Let us know in the comments.

[Lead image is the Jim Henson Doodle]

That site has just received a pretty significant overhaul, and the folks at Google are pretty excited about it.

You can still browse through all of the Doodle, filtered by year and country – just like before. But Google has added deeper interaction with each specific Doodle.

For instance, if I click on that awesome Les Paul Doodle from June, 2011, I am taken to a page when I can interact with the Doodle (read rock out on the guitar) and learn some information behind the Doodle as well.

We’ve always thought it was a little sad that doodles are only available on the homepage for a day. Since we’re firm believers in having too much of a good thing, we set up a gallery of all our previous doodles a while ago. Now on the new site, you can browse, watch or play with over 1000 doodles. Enjoy front-row tickets to a Martha Graham dance, send the first man to space or learn more about why one doodler decided to “cartoonize” Mary Blair.

Google has also added the Doodle Store to the mix, allowing you to order a variety of items stamped with your favorite Google Doodles. This includes T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, stamps and even skateboards. This holiday season, make sure to snag a Pierre de Fermat-inspired coffee mug for all the math geeks out there.

What’s your favorite Google Doodle From 2011? Let us know in the comments.

View more daily video round-ups here.

iPad 2 Halloween costume:

Pumpkin explosion:

Siri hacked onto iPhone 4:

Google’s Halloween Doodle:

Apple’s new iPhone 4S/iCloud TV spot:

Kitchen knife nunchucks:

The Kinect Effect (note the symphonic version of “Where is My Mind” playing in the background):

Google Chrome Movember (this is why Matt Cutts is growing a Moustache):

C3 Technologies (mapping company now owned by Apple):

For example, who would have expected Google to mark the occasion of the 118th birthday of the man who discovered Vitamin C? Don’t raise your hand if you don’t work at or with Google, because I won’t believe you.

That’s what they have done today. It’s the 118th birthday of Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, a Hungarian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937. He is credited with the discovery of vitamin C and the components and reactions of the citric acid cycle. NobelPrize.org has a nice bio of him.

He died in 1986 at the age of 93.

Consider just how important vitamin C is, and you might say to yourself, “Yes, this guy absolutely deserves a Google doodle.” But would it have ever occurred to you if Google didn’t do it?

It’s always nice to see the artistic creativity that goes into Google’s doodles. And today’s is nice visually, but often the coolest thing about Google doodles is simply the education they can deliver. Think about how many more people will know who Albert Szent-Gyorgyi is now because Google changed its logo today. How many people will click on that doodle out of curiosity and learn something new? And something worth knowing at that.

This week, comScore reported that 65.09% of all U.S. searches are Google searches. They’re not all from the Google home page, but considering that Americans conducted nearly 20 Billion core searches in August, I think it’s safe to say that a lot of people see Google’s doodles.

In that spirit of learning about vitamin C, here are some charts showing the amount of vitamin C in various plants and animals (via Wikipedia):

Debuting on the official Star Wars blog, the Star Wars Fail Whale is a nifty take on Twitter’s all-too ubiquitous Fail Whale, and it’s done with great style. This sweet mash-up is courtesy of an online artist named Le Kemp, who, besides his Star Wars/Twitter remixes, creates some really nice visual work.

His take on the Osama situation is subtle, yet keen, especially if you like Jaws. And then there’s his rendition of the Twitter bird, which is also full of win in, and of, itself.

As for the Star Wars Fail Whale, the TIE Fighters are an extremely nice touch, and they also provide good insight as to why Twitter may be down. Clearly, the Empire finds their lack of network stability disturbing; although, I am curious about the relationship between the bird and the whale. That doesn’t really compute, unless Doctor Moreau is working for the Sith.

Silliness aside, in a day where Google Doodles rule the roost, save some room to celebrate the Star Wars Fail Whale. Of course, to actually beat the current Google Doodle, the TIE Fighters would have to fly the Whale off of the screen. Google’s animation is just that good.

British-born Hargreaves is of course the beloved author of over one hundred children’s books. His most famous books come from the Mr. Men and Little Miss series.

The stories are simple, funny and often times contain morals. Some of his beloved characters are Mr. Happy, Mr. Grumpy, Little Miss Sunshine and Little Miss Chatterbox.

Hargreaves’ books were a beloved part of my childhood, and millions more, as he has sold almost 100 million copies of his books worldwide. If you were born after 1975 or so and were not read these books as a child, you have terrible parents. Just kidding on that…but seriously. These books are crucial.

So this series of doodles is among my favorite Google doodles as of late. I also really loved the Charlie Chaplin doodle and the Earth day doodle. The recent royal wedding doodle was a little hard to discern, according to some.

Below are all 16 doodles. Hargreaves would have been 76 today.