Google Doodle celebrates 255th anniversary of British Museum

 
Tribute: the illustration for today's Google Doodle represents the British Museum
Rachel Blundy15 January 2014

The 255th anniversary of the British Museum has been commemorated in an illustration on the homepage for search engine giant Google today.

The Google Doodle, which is updated daily, includes the iconic Easter Island statue known as Hoa Hakananai'a.

In 2013 the institution celebrated its most successful year for visitors - with 6.7million people walking through its doors, beating a previous record of six million visits in 2008.

When it was first opened on January 15, 1759, it became the country's first national museum.

Founded by physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane, it originally featured about 80,000 objects, including 40,000 books and 7,000 manuscripts. It now contains about eight million artefacts.

Exhibitions being staged this year include Vikings: life and legend and Ming: 50 years that changed China.

Read More

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in