15 Great Google Doodles Paying Tribute to Maurice Sendak, 'Star Trek,' and More

To celebrate Maurice Sendak's 85th birthday, the search engine dedicated a doodle to the late author of 'Where the Wild Things Are' featuring some of his most beloved characters.

Courtesy of Frank Zamboni, the man who invented, quite obviously, the zamboni.

Or, if you hit the play button for a video that sat above Google's search bar in May 2013, you would have seen the Google logo transformed in the style of Saul Bass, the artist behind movie openings like 'Psycho' and 'North By Northwest' that would have turned 93 this year.

More accurately, users got a chance to look at a dish. On the 160th birthday of bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri, the search engine site developed an interactive doodle that allowed users to view what certain bacteria looked like. Just thank goodness it was behind the screen.

Google helped us appreciate Earth, and its season, with an interactive graphic on 2013's Earth Day. So why are you sitting here on the computer? Go outside already!

It's surprising it took until her 96th birthday for Google to toast Ella Fitzgerald, legendary singer of hits like "At Last." If they hadn't, we'd be bewitched. And bothered. And bewildered, for that matter.

So the search engine devoted a doodle to them on International Women's Day.

And also for Gorey, as in illustrator Edward Gorey, who the search engine paid tribute to in February 2013.

Google beamed up the original cast of 'Star Trek' as inspiration for this Google Doodle to celebrate the 46th anniversary of the beloved original series. It's a search engine, not a doctor, dammit!

The search engine celebrated Douglas Adams' birthday with a doodle dedicated to 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,' providing users with helpful hints on how to survive on Earth.

Google helped make searching a bit cozier when it featured late artist Bob Ross in a favorite doodle. Look at all those happy little Gs.

With Google's Valentine's Day doodle, which honored George Ferris — the inventor of the Ferris Wheel — with an interactive love story.

Some serious nostalgia came courtesy of Google in 2011, when it honored Art Clokey's 90th birthday with an interactive Gumby doodle.

Before Maurice Sendak, there was Winsor McCay, the comic strip artist who created 'Little Nemo in Slumberland.' And then, 107 years after the comic strip first debuted, Google took users on a tour through Nemo's world with an interactive doodle. Certainly, there was no one slumbering through this.