August 6

At 7:05 in the morning on the 6th in 1926, Gertrude Caroline Ederle slipped into the water at Cap Gris-Nez, France for a leisurely early-morning swim. She must have found the water quite refreshing because 14 and a half hours later she walked ashore in Kingsdown, England. In so doing, she became the first woman to swim the English Channel. I am certain that she did it for the love of swimming and that the money that she was repeatedly paid by several American publishers did not influence her choices that day at all. Previously, in 1925, Ederle swam from lower Manhattan to Sandy Hook, a sure sign that this woman was absolutely twisted when it came to large expanses of open water. I’m fairly certain that her close friends and associates had to keep a close eye on her whenever she ventured too close to large bodies of water and must have been repeatedly put in the position of having to chase off after her as she galloped towards any convenient shoreline that crossed her path.