after Aug. 6, 1926, Ederle, red with sheep grease, waded into the English Channel at Cape Gris-Nez, She could see a red ball on the French shore, a warning to small boats that the sea was forecast to be very choppy. "Please, God, help me," she said. While swimming the sometimes sang two popular songs of that time, "Let Me Call Channel, she You Sweetheart" and "Yes, We Have Bananas", rhythm stroke. During her and her hour at sea, her trainer following in a support boat became concerned by unfavorable winds head obvious exhaustion that he called to her "Trudy, you must come out!" The swimmer lifted her from the choppy waters. "What for?" she yelled back, and kept swimming. Fourteen hours 31 minutes leaving the French shore, Ederle reached Kingsdown on the after English coast, two hours faster than any man before her. It was a world record. When Ederle returned home, she was greeted with a parade in New York City on Aug. 27, 1926, in which an estimated two million people turned out and "Trudy! The hearing problem Ederle had since childhood was made worse by the Channel swim. For many years later, she taught swimming to children at the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York. Ederle never married. She lived for a long time in Flushing, Queens, New York with two female companions. Gertrude Ederle died on November 30, 2003, at the age of 98. (Note: article has been adapted.) This