On This Day - August 7th 1987
American woman Lynne Cox becomes the first person to swim from the United States to the Soviet Union.
It was an exercise which found favour with the Russians but went largely unnoticed by her fellow Americans. On 7 August 1987, Lynne Cox, 30, became the first woman to swim the Bering Strait, the channel forming the boundary line between Alaska in the United States and Siberia, in the Soviet Union. The swim across the 4.3km strait opened the U.S.-Soviet border for the first time in forty-eight years. Cox swam without a shark cage, wet suit, or lanolin grease to protect her from the 5 degrees Celsius waters. Weighing in at over 82 kilograms proved an advantage to Cox, as her 36% body fat insulated her effectively. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev later said, "She proved by her courage how closely to each other our people live." US President Ronald Reagan had no idea about whom Mr Gorbachev was speaking.
Cox had a history of endurance swimming. At ages 15 and 16, she broke the men's and women's world records for swimming the English Channel, swimming 53km in nine hours and thirty-six minutes. At 18, she swam the 32km Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. She was also the first to swim the Straits of Magellan, considered to be the world's most treacherous stretch of water, though only 4.8km, and she was the first to swim the Cape of Good Hope.