David Attenborough's 100th Birthday

defrost 548 points 103 comments May 08, 2026
www.bbc.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (19 comments)

yreg

I'm surprised none of these threads made it to the front page.

thamer

Searching for David Attenborough on Google also shows a tribute, with drawings of animals and a "Thank You Sir David". https://www.google.com/search?q=david+attenborough

nephihaha

He outlasted his brother by quite a while. Managed to travel more miles than nearly anyone else apart from popes and political leaders.

snorremd

The sad thing is Attenborough has lived to see the destruction of nature he loved so much. His constant warnings have gone mostly unheard. In some ways I think excellent nature programming like his own Nature is doing a disservice by making it seem like there's lots of wild nature left. I wish humans would come together to re-wild more of the earth. Restoring wild nature and cutting emissions is the only way to really restore natural ecosystems. We're nowhere close to doing that.

jmkni

What's the opposite of the black bar? Should HN have a green bar for things like this?

dude250711

A lifestyle impossible for any foreseeable generation.

usermac

Glad to hear. I thought all those videos recently of him were AI.

SVI

He is a legend and has educated more people in natural history than anyone else ever...

vr46

Top man, lives up on Richmond Hill and absolutely loves it - when asked about his travels and adventures and where he would choose to live, he replied, "I already live there" Fairly well-known locally is that my favourite bookshop, The Open Book in Richmond, stocks signed copies of all his books. They used to be signed directly on the page, but since he got to the mid-to-late nineties in age, tons of hardbacks are too much, so Helena wanders up there to get a load of bookplates signed these days. Apart from that, I order all my books from them when I'm in London and a subsequent chat with Madeleine usually lasts ten times as long as the book shopping. Anyway, I digress, yes, Sir David, amazing body of works and the books are wonderful.

forinti

I just love those documentaries where he starts off in Europe following some bird and ends up on a rock in the middle of the ocean. And he's been at it since when the world was much bigger. What a life!

deferredgrant

I wonder how many scientists and engineers were first pulled toward their field by an Attenborough documentary. That kind of slow cultural influence is hard to measure.

owenpalmer

One of the most iconic voices. https://youtu.be/P3ump1Buszo?si=0DoXiDTqZOyTBUst

ge96

I remember watching blue planet seas of life in middle school in the early 2000s crazy.

hilbert42

A truly great communicator, we need more like him.

CSMastermind

He was just mentioned on today's Lateral podcast with Tom Scott. Apparently, he's the reason tennis balls are yellow. I guess they were traditionally white but when they started broadcasting matches on TV it was too hard to see the ball. David who was at the BBC at the time suggested they use yellow balls instead so they would come through on camera. Ever since then tennis balls have been yellow.

Eridanus2

https://share.google/Bmx5QA0ZZQU36NqXK

deepsun

Unpopular opinion: I don't understand why people are so fascinated with a man simply because of his voice narrating truly marvelous, artistic documentaries. I have way more respect for operators, who spent months in harsh conditions with a slim chance to film anything interesting.

codelong888

Happy Birthday

aanet

TIL he's the brother of director Sir Richard Attenborough.

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