Google Commemorates Columbus Day With Pic of Paddington Bear

October 13th, 2008 1:15 PM

As Americans celebrate Columbus Day, one of our nation's largest companies, Google, is commememorating the occasion by displaying a picture of the Paddington Bear at its website.

I kid you not.

I guess the good folks at Google feel the 50th anniversary of the creation of this fictional character is more important than the 516th anniversary of Columbus landing in the Americas (via Wikipedia, h/t NBer Priebles):

Paddington Bear is a fictional character in children's literature. He first appeared on 13 October 1958 and was subsequently featured in several books, most recently in 2008, written by Michael Bond and first illustrated by Peggy Fortnum. The polite immigrant bear from Darkest Peru, with his old bush hat, battered suitcase and marmalade sandwiches has become a classic English children's literature icon.

It has been well-documented that Google conveniently ignores some of America's national holidays like Memorial Day. But commemorating Columbus Day with the Paddington Bear?

Amazing.