- She donated most of her salary from Swim Girl, Swim (1927) to the Womens Swimming Association, which had sponsored her first try at crossing the Channel. At the age of 21 she suffered a nervous breakdown, and in 1933 she fractured her pelvis and injured her spine in a fall. She was in a cast for four years. She did, however, recover and make a comeback at Billy Rose's Aquacade at the 1939 World's Fair in New York. She also claims to be the inventor of the two-piece bathing suit, having cut up her favorite training suit to make it easier to swim the English Channel.
- In 1925 she swam the 21 miles from the tip of Manhattan to Sandy Hook, NJ, in 7 hours 11.5 minutes, beating a record held by a man.
- Due to stormy weather, she swam a total of 35 miles covering the 21-mile-wide English Channel. Conditions were so harsh, steamship crossings were canceled, and Ederle nearly quit seven minutes in because of a rough swell. Her time (14 hrs, 39 mins) demolished the record of 21 hrs, 45 mins set in 1875.
- Won bronze medals in the 100 and the 400-meter individual freestyle and a gold medal in the 4x100-meter freestyle relay at the 1924 Olympics.
- A childhood bout with measles and damage to her eardrums during the Channel swim left her entirely deaf by the 1940s. Ederle spent much of her later life teaching children to swim at the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York.
- From 1921-1925, she set 29 national and world amateur records - seven records in one day in 1922 - from 50 yards to the half-mile.
- During an English Channel attempt in 1925 a worried trainer grabbed her arm when she began coughing, disqualifying her when he touched her.
- Swam in the 1924 Olympics in Paris with one second-place, one third-place, and one first on a relay team.
- Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 165-167. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.
- In 1933, she fell down the steps of her apartment building and suffered a spinal injury that left her paralyzed for several years. By 1939, she was able to recover from it through intense training.
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