Marilyn Bell was a sixteen year old who swam the Lake Ontario in seventy thousand strokes as an underdog. She was know as "The First Lady of the Lake". As she swam eels attacked her legs and by the time she was finished over 100,000 people had joined to watch her. Florence Chadwick was offered $10,000 to swim across the lake for publicity reasons but then Marilyn offered to do it without pay. She swam for 20 hours and 29 minutes. In 1954, she was named the Canadian Newsmaker of the Year by the Canadian Press. I think that she did a very risky thing, and for the most part she didn't do it for money. She did it to prove she was stronger than what most people thought she was and to prove she could do something they thought she wasn't capable of doing. She's very admiring.
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