New York, NY —

The first woman to swim the English Channel was a 21-year-old New Yorker named Gertrude Ederle. Three years ago, one of her old training routes was revived -- a swim from Battery Park, at the tip of Manhattan, to Sandy Hook, New Jersey. It's a 17.5 mile swim that comes as close as you can get to the conditions of the English Channel, as six people found out yesterday. Lara Pellegrinelli has the details.

Read the New York Times article of June 16, 1925 (PDF), describing Gertrude Ederle's recording breaking swim:

Girl Swims To Hook From the Battery