British broadcaster Sir David Attenborough has frolicked with gorillas, tracked historic fish, launched viewers to flying pterosaurs, and warned thousands and thousands that the pure world is operating out of time. For greater than 70 years, his calm and unmistakable voice has guided audiences via a few of Earth’s most spectacular ecosystems, together with the deep ocean, tropical rainforests and frozen poles.
On Might 8, 2026, Attenborough turns 100. The milestone highlights a unprecedented life in speaking the science of planet Earth — a profession that started on the BBC within the early Nineteen Fifties, helped outline fashionable wildlife filmmaking, and ultimately made Attenborough one of many world’s most recognizable advocates for conservation and local weather motion.
To mark Attenborough’s a centesimal birthday, listed below are 13 stunning details concerning the broadcaster who modified how we see life on Earth.
1. He is nonetheless making nature movies as he turns 100.
Attenborough remains to be intently concerned in pure historical past broadcasting. His 2025 feature-length documentary, “Ocean with David Attenborough,” was timed round main worldwide ocean occasions, together with World Oceans Day (June 8) and the 2025 United Nations Ocean Convention, and focuses on marine ecosystems and the options that may safeguard them for future generations.
2. He helped form British TV earlier than changing into the face of wildlife documentaries.
Lengthy earlier than the favored “Planet Earth” and “The Blue Planet,” Attenborough was a strong determine behind the digital camera. In 1965, he was appointed controller (a sort of editorial place) of BBC Two, then a younger TV channel nonetheless defining its identification. Underneath his management, BBC Two grew to become recognized for its formidable cultural and academic programming, together with collection comparable to “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” “Civilisation” and “The Ascent of Man.” Attenborough stepped down from this position in 1972 to develop his personal collection, “Life on Earth.”
3. He is the explanation tennis balls are brightly coloured.
Throughout his time as BBC Two controller, Attenborough was in control of introducing shade on tv, beating Germany to the first-ever shade broadcasts in Europe. Shortly after the primary Wimbledon shade broadcast in 1967, Attenborough pushed for the match to change its balls from conventional white to vibrant yellow for simpler visibility — a change that ultimately caught.
4. His brother performed John Hammond in “Jurassic Park.”
British actor Richard Attenborough as entrepreneur John Hammond in a scene from the 1993 movie “Jurassic Park.”
(Picture credit score: Murray Shut through Getty Photographs)
David Attenborough will not be the one well-known Attenborough. His older brother was Richard Attenborough, the Oscar-winning actor and director who’s most well-known for enjoying John Hammond, the eccentric billionaire behind the dinosaur theme park in Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster “Jurassic Park.” Richard Attenborough, who was additionally recognized for guiding the award-winning 1982 movie “Gandhi,” was the oldest of the three Attenborough brothers; David was the center little one, and their youthful brother, John, grew to become a motor-industry government. David is the one surviving sibling.
5. Greater than 50 organisms have been named after him.
Attenborough’s identify lives on not simply in tv but in addition in science. The precise quantity is tough to calculate, however greater than 50 organisms have been named in his honor, starting from dwelling frogs, vegetation, fish and bugs to extinct marine reptiles. They embody Nepenthes attenboroughii (a carnivorous pitcher plant), Pristimantis attenboroughi (rubber frog), Attenborosaurus (a genus of plesiosaurs, extinct prehistoric marine reptiles), Microleo attenboroughi (an extinct prehistoric marsupial lion) and lots of extra.
6. He would not like rats.
Attenborough has remained unperturbed by encounters with mountain gorillas, venomous snakes and numerous different harmful wild animals, however rats are one other matter. He has spoken overtly about his dislike of them, tracing the aversion to at least one night time within the Solomon Islands, when, throughout a thunderstorm, he found rats operating throughout his mattress and the ground of his hut. Even so, he has harassed that rats, like all animals, deserve respect.
7. He was rejected from the primary BBC job he utilized for.
David Attenborough smiling in 1965.
(Picture credit score: Mirrorpix / Contributor / Getty Photographs)
Attenborough’s first try to hitch the BBC didn’t go effectively. In 1950, when he was 24 years previous, he utilized to change into a radio speak present producer and was rejected. He later joined the broadcaster as a trainee producer in 1952, which marked the start of a BBC profession that might outline nature broadcasting for generations.
8. He by no means handed his driving take a look at and nonetheless would not drive.
Regardless of a lifetime of filming in distant rainforests, deserts, islands and polar areas, Attenborough by no means handed his driving take a look at. He has stated he would not like driving — a stunning element for somebody whose profession is so intently associated to journey.
9. His mother and father took in two Jewish refugees throughout World Battle II.
Throughout World Battle II, Attenborough’s mother and father fostered Irene and Helga Bejach, two Jewish sisters who had fled Nazi Germany shortly earlier than the conflict started in 1939. The ladies lived with the Attenborough household in Leicester for seven years earlier than transferring to New York to hitch a relative. A long time later, Attenborough hosted a reunion for the sisters’ descendants.
10. He tries to put in writing again to followers.
Sir David Attenborough talked about he receives round 70 letters from followers a day.
(Picture credit score: John Phillips/Getty Photographs)
Attenborough receives enormous quantities of fan mail, however he tries to answer when he can. In a 2021 BBC Radio 1 interview, he stated he receives as many as 70 letters a day and requested correspondents to incorporate a self-addressed, stamped envelope in the event that they wished a response.
11. He served within the Royal Navy.
Earlier than changing into a broadcaster, Attenborough accomplished nationwide service within the Royal Navy. He was known as up in 1947 and was posted to an plane service. After leaving the Navy, he labored in publishing, enhancing kids’s science textbooks. Although it was an early trace of the academic mission that might later outline his TV profession, he quickly uninterested in the work.
12. His first BBC program was a couple of “dwelling fossil.”
The coelacanth was as soon as regarded as extinct.
(Picture credit score: Bruce Henderson)
Attenborough’s first BBC program as a trainee producer was “Coelacanth,” a broadcast in 1952. This system centered on the rediscovery of the coelacanth, a deep-sea fish as soon as regarded as intently linked to the ancestors of land vertebrates. Scientists now know lungfish are the closest dwelling family members of tetrapods, the four-limbed vertebrates that embody amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.
The “Coelacanth” program instructed the story of a exceptional fish that scientists had recognized solely from fossils and believed had vanished with the nonavian dinosaurs round 66 million years in the past. That modified in 1938, when a trawler working in South Africa hauled up an odd, steel-blue fish with fleshy, limb-like fins. The rediscovery surprised scientists and made the coelacanth some of the well-known “dwelling fossils” on Earth.
13. Child mountain gorillas tried to steal his footwear.
Considered one of Attenborough’s most well-known animal encounters occurred in Rwanda whereas he was filming “Life on Earth” in 1979. As he sat amongst mountain gorillas, two younger gorillas started tugging at his footwear. Attenborough later described the second as “bliss.” The scene stays one of many defining photographs of his profession, unscripted and stuffed with surprise.
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