In today's video, we'll be discussing the
interesting life story of one of
Britain's most beloved nature
documentary presenters
Sir David Attenborough.
Boo!
Hi and welcome to 'One in
Seven Billion', where we discussed
one interesting person per video.
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For those of you who don't know who
David Attenborough is... Well he's known
for writing and presenting his
fascinating nature documentaries for
over six decades. Many people can trace
their fascination with animals back to
the beautiful way he displays the animal Kingdom.
Not many know however the depth
of Attenborough's career. So let's have a
peek at his live so far and his many, many
achievements. Born in London on May 8th 1926,
David Attenborough is the middle
child of his family and has two brothers.
His family moved to Leicester and he
grew up on the campus of the University of Leicester,
where his father worked as
the principal. Attenborough was
fascinated with nature from a very young
age, amassing a large collection of
bird eggs and fossils by the age of
seven! he used to spend hours cycling
miles to get to quaries to find fossils.
At 11, he apparently used to make a bit
of pocket money on the side by selling
newts to the University for three pence
each - which funnily enough.. the newts only
came from a pond five meters away from
the University's zoology department. At
13, in 1936 he attended a lecture that
would shape the rest of his life.
It was by a conservationist known as
'Grey Owl'. During the talk the Grey Owl
talked about saving the environment.
this talk has inspired Attenborough
throughout his whole life.
At 15, in 1939, the Attenborough family adopted two
Jewish girls Helga and Irene.
They lived with them for seven years during the
rising tensions in Germany and
eventually ended up moving to the U.S.
to be with relatives.
The girls were orphaned during the war,
as their father was killed at Auschwitz,
and their mother died from tuberculosis. Attenborough considered them to be his
sisters and stayed in close contact with
them until their deaths in 1992 and 2005.
He was awarded a scholarship to study
Natural Sciences at the prestigious
University of Cambridge. But once graduated,
was called to serve in the Royal Navy
for two years. He had at the time hoped
this would allow him to travel the world
but instead found himself assigned to a
ship in Wales. He also apparently to this
day doesn't own a car as he hasn't
passed his driving test.
After he left the Royal Navy Attenborough returned to
his birthplace of London.
He was initially rejected from the first job he
applied for at the BBC. But went on to
find work at the BBC on a training
programme and began working as a
producer despite not even owning a TV at
the time. In 1950 Attenborough married Jane Oriel,
who he'd met at university. They
went on to have two children, a son
Robert and a daughter Susan.
Unfortunately Jane died in 1997 from a
brain hemorrhage.
Even though he had made it into the BBC
back in 1952 there was little to no
presence of nature on television so it
was a slow steady struggle to get to the
type of programmes we're used to today
on top of this his boss at the time even
thought Attenborough teeth were too big
to be on TV which is insane imagine a
world without Attenborough being the face of
nature documentaries. Apparently he only
became an on-screen presenter after
their first choice got sick. So how did
Attenborough ago about working his way up to the
wildlife documentaries we all loved from
him? Well... first he produced quiz shows
and programs that involved bringing
animals out of their natural habitat and
onto recording sets. He wasn't content
with this approach as it really
distressed the animals but it was a norm
at the time. He managed to break this
tradition in 1954 with his documentary
series, 'The Zoo Quest', it was a huge
success and led to the BBC establishing
its natural history Unit. It looked like it had been eaten by an Orangutang, one must have been
here early this morning. despite the
success Attenborough left the BBC in the
1960s to study social anthropology which
is the study of how people live in
different social and cultural settings
across the globe he returned to the BBC
in 1965 when they established BBC two as
he was hired as their director for
programming for both BBC One and BBC two
he was responsible at this time for
bringing colour TV to the British public for
the first time in 1972 though he
resigned from the BBC to follow his
passion for nature documentaries after
leaving the BBC Attenborough wrote and
produced success after success after
success of popular nature programmes his
greatest success at the time was in 1976
when life on earth first aired the show
lasted 96 episodes and took him around
the globe using cutting-edge filming
techniques to record nature as it had never
been seen before it's estimated that
this show had an audience of over 500
million people this is the show that
made Attenborough a household name and
led to countless series of success
afterwards he has also narrated BBC
documentaries including planet earth the
most successful documentary ever made
planet Earth 2, the sequel was so popular
that on release day is slowed down the
internet in China from so many people
trying to download it. More recently
his innovations come in the form of
working on a 3d program for the channel
sky and has become more and more vocal
about the effects that humanity is
having on the planet. There's a
groundswell internationally of
recognizing of what we are doing to the
planet and and the disaster that awaits
unless we do something
trouble is that the problems are getting
worse and worse and worse by the day
in 1985 Attenborough received a
knighthood from the Queen making him Sir
David Attenborough and I'm sure it's of
no surprise that in 2014 a poll
suggested he was the most trustworthy
public figure in the whole of Britain
amazingly he is believed to be the most
travelled person in the entire world and is
the oldest person to have visited at the
North Pole
Rather fittingly over his life he has
had over 10 plants and animals named
after him which seems like the most
appropriate reward for all the decades
of quality content he showed us of
nature also weirdly enough a human head
was found in his back garden in 2011 it
was discovered when construction workers
were adding an extension to
Attenborough's home the skull belonged
to a widow who in 1879 had been killed
by her housekeeper the police at the
time had arrested the housekeeper but
they just never found the head and so we
now get to 20/20
he's now 93 has no signs of stopping his
career anytime soon. his mission of
conservation is ever clearer with a
focus on the drastic effects humans have
had on the planet
I've linked in the description and in
the pop-up link above the trail of
attenborough's new film a life on our
planet which was set to be released
earlier this year because of Covid.. yeah
like everything else it's been delayed
so with that yet to be released we can
hope for even more to come from him and
his very calming voice and I don't make
these programs out of some kind of
proselytizing view that people ought to
be interested in I do because I'm interested  in them and it gives me a huge pleasure
and I think other people can get
pleasure from it too. so did any of this
shock you? leave a comment below about
anything you learnt and remember to hit the
like and subscribe buttons for more
videos and thank you for watching see
you next time on one in seven billion.
