Meerkat Manor is a British television programme produced by Oxford Scientific Films for Animal Planet International that ran for four series between September 2005 and August 2008. Blending more traditional animal documentary style footage with dramatic narration, the series told the story of the Whiskers, one of more than a dozen families of meerkats in the Kalahari Desert being studied as part of the Kalahari Meerkat Project, a long-term field study into the ecological causes and evolutionary consequences of the cooperative nature of meerkats. With the success of the programme in the UK, Animal Planet started broadcasting it on its national channels in Australia, Canada, and the US. It has since been rebroadcast in more than 160 other countries. Although the show faced criticism from viewers for not intervening when a meerkat was injured and faced death, as a whole Meerkat Manor enjoyed considerable success, and its experimental format broke new ground in animal documentary filming techniques. It was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards in 2007, and was a winner at the 2006 Omni Awards and at the 2006 and 2007 New York Festivals Award Galas.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meerkat_Manor
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1918:
World War I: Following his armed forces' defeat to the Allied Powers, Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I abdicated in favor of his son Boris III (pictured). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_III_of_Bulgaria
1935:
Italian forces under General Emilio De Bono invaded Abyssinia during the opening stages of the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Bono%27s_invasion_of_Abyssinia
1951:
In Major League Baseball, the New York Giants' Bobby Thomson hit the "Shot Heard 'Round the World", a game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the National League pennant after being down 14 games. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shot_Heard_%27Round_the_World_(baseball)
1963:
Oswaldo López Arellano replaced Honduran President Ramón Villeda Morales in a violent coup and initiated two decades of military rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1963_Honduran_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
2013:
A boat carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the Italian island of Lampedusa, with a second boat sinking eight days later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Lampedusa_migrant_shipwreck
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
unitive: Causing or characterized by unity or union. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/unitive
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
TV in America created the most coherent reality distortion field that I’ve ever seen. Therein is the problem: People who vote watch TV, and they are hallucinating like a sonofabitch. Basically, what we have in this country is government by hallucinating mob. --John Perry Barlow https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Perry_Barlow