Today on the Google home page in the United States and Canada is a Doodle, Google logo, for Tom Longboat’s 131st birthday. For almost all of his professional career he was the dominant long distance runner of the time. In fact, today on his birthday in Ontario is “Tom Longboat Day.” He was born on June 4, 1887 in Ontario and died at the age of 61 on January 9, 1949.

He was a dispatch runner in World War I for the Canadian army and was declared dead twice in the service. Yea, he was found later to be alive.

Google wrote:

To learn more about his life, check out Wikipedia.

Forum discussion at Twitter.