Gerald Durrell (7 January 1925 – 30 January 1995) was a British naturalist, writer and zookeeper. He was born in British India and moved to England in 1928. In 1935 the family moved to Corfu, but the outbreak of World War II forced them to return to the United Kingdom. In the 1940s he began animal-collecting trips for zoos, and published well- received accounts of these, starting with The Overloaded Ark. His account of the years in Corfu, titled My Family and Other Animals, appeared in 1956 and became a bestseller. He founded the Jersey Zoo in 1959, intending it to be an institution for the study of animals and for captive breeding. Durrell and his second wife, Lee McGeorge, made several television documentaries in the 1980s, including Durrell in Russia and Ark on the Move. They co-authored The Amateur Naturalist, which became his most successful book, selling well over a million copies. .

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_McGeorge_Durrell

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1904:

The Marconi International Marine Communication Company specified CQD (audio featured) as the distress signal to be used by its operators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CQD

1939:

French physicist Marguerite Perey identified francium, the last element to be discovered in nature rather than by synthesis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francium

1979:

The People's Army of Vietnam captured Phnom Penh, marking the end of large-scale fighting in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian%E2%80%93Vietnamese_War

2020:

After 253 days without an operational government, a second round of investiture votes produced Spain's first coalition government since the Second Republic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019%E2%80%932020_Spanish_government_formation

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

glebe farm: (chiefly UK, Christianity) A home farm owned by a parish, assigned as part of a benefice to a parish priest, pastor, rector, or vicar to provide them with income. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glebe_farm

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

We have familiar experience of the order, the constancy, the perpetual renovation of the material world which surrounds us. Frail and transitory as is every part of it, restless and migratory as are its elements, still it abides. It is bound together by a law of permanence, and though it is ever dying, it is ever coming to life again. Dissolution does but give birth to fresh modes of organization, and one death is the parent of a thousand lives. Each hour, as it comes, is but a testimony how fleeting, yet how secure, how certain, is the great whole.   --William Peter Blatty https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Peter_Blatty