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Towel Day: Google hides Easter egg tribute to Douglas Adams

Christopher Hooton
Wednesday 25 May 2016 16:18 BST
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Today is Towel Day, a brilliantly absurd annual celebration that sees people carry towels with them on the street.

Why? Because in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, being able to quickly lay your hands on a towel was the mark of a competent being, giving rise to the saying: “There's a frood who really knows where his towel is!”

Author Douglas Adams died in May 2001, and each year in the same months fans pay tribute.

This year, Google got in on it, linking to a Hitchhikers Easter egg in its search engine:

“42” of course, was the answer to the meaning of life given by enormous supercomputer Deep Thought after 7.5 million years of calculations.

The seemingly impenetrable answer has remained a source of fascination, even leading to the 2011 book 42: Douglas Adams' Amazingly Accurate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything which looks at the number 42’s role in science and popular culture.

Last year, Google created a pretty spectacular Easter egg for the return of Star Wars.

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