Today in 1987, American swimmer Lynne Cox took to the freezing waters of the Bering Strait in a call for peace between the world’s superpowers.
Cox grew up in New Hampshire, and later moved to California to work with coaches who could help her make the most of her talent in the water.
It worked: as a teenager she broke the world record for swimming the English Channel twice, on the way to building her reputation as a world-class open-water swimmer.
According to Cox, her dad suggested that she should try swimming the Bering Strait, because “it would show that the United States and the Soviet Union are neighbors.”
It took 11 years of reaching out to American and Soviet officials to try to get permission to cross the border.
Finally she got some help from the organizers of the Goodwill Games, who put her in touch with an aide to Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Soviets only opened their border to the American swimmer a day before she was set to make the swim.
Now, Cox was only swimming 2.7 miles from an island off the western coast of Alaska to another island off the coast of eastern Siberia.
Distance wasn’t the number one challenge here.
The cold was: the water here is freezing!
But Cox has an unusual physical tolerance to cold, which scientists actually studied during her swim.
She also trained by swimming regularly in 40ºF water.
Other challenges included fog, which made it hard to navigate, and communications issues between her team and the Soviets.
All of it meant Cox initially landed about a half mile down from her welcoming party in the USSR.
But after that, she became an international star.
In fact, the next year, when Gorbachev came to the US to sign a nuclear treaty, he paid tribute to Cox, saying that “she proved by her courage how close to each other our peoples live.”
And for the record, Gorbachev did not swim his way to the United States.
Today in 2019, a big moment for actor and taco impresario Danny Trejo.
The TV and movie tough guy had a real life good guy moment.
Trejo happened to be near a crash in LA that left a kid trapped in an overturned car.
He and another bystander freed the kid and kept him calm while firefighters freed the kid’s mom.
Later, he said, “Everything good that has happened to me has happened as a direct result of helping someone else.”
How an American swimmer helped thaw Cold War relations (Boston.com)
Lynne Cox swims into communist territory (History.com)
‘Machete’ to the rescue: Actor Danny Trejo helps save child trapped in overturned car in Sylmar (ABC 7)