Did You Know? Pool Facts!

Swimming has a rich and developed history. Pools are a little newer! Swimming dates back to ancient times, swimming has been recorded in 10,000 year-old cave drawings, paintings and literature. In fact, an ancient Egyptian clay seal dated between 9,000 BCE and 4,000 BCE shows four people swimming!Leonardo_da_Vinci_-_Lifebelt_sketch

Swimming was also part of a knight’s training during the middle ages. It was considered more and more unacceptable though as time went one because swimming required an inappropriate amount of clothing to the conservative society. Leonardo di Vinci actually sketched early versions of the lifevest, a ‘lifebelt’ as seen here.

Swimming and pools have come a long way since then. People now swim in a pool for competition, use their pool for weight loss or spend quality time with their family in the water.

 

To celebrate some of these facts,

we compiled them into a fun piece of art!

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Here are some other cool & interesting facts, courtesy of: www.simplyswim.com!

  • The oldest swimming stroke is Breaststroke, which is also the slowest stroke swum at the Olympics
  • Over half of the top swimmers in the world suffer with shoulder pain
  • The Bikini got it’s name from Bikini Atoll – a nuclear test site in the South Pacific!
  • Elephants can swim up to 20 miles a day using their trunks to breathe through
  • In Egypt, there have been ancient drawings and paintings found that go back to 2500AD so humans have been swimming fot at least 10,000 years
  • The Olympics began as a mens only competition and in 1912 women were allowed to participate
  • The first cruise ship with a swimming pool was the Titanic
  • The first man to swim the English Channel was Captain Matthew Webb in 1875
  • August 6th 1926 – Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to swim the English Channel and did it quicker than the fastest male
  • Swimming became an Olympic event in 1896
  • The tumble turn was invented by the American swimming coach Tex Armstrong who trained Adolph Keifer for the 1936 Olympics
  • Swimming works out all the body’s main muscles
  • The first diving board in England was at Highgate Ponds in 1893
  • About 65,000 people in the USA don’t know how to swim
  • More than 1 million micro creatures at swimming, feeding and reproducing behind your lips!
  • Benjamin Franklin invented swimming fins
  • Kangaroos are excellent swimmers, just don’t let them in your pool!
  • Synchronized swimming was not featured in the Olympics until 1984
  • The first swimming race recorded was in Japan
  • In the 1300’s the first swimming goggles were made from tortoise shells, the first rubber goggles were made in the 1930’s
  • ‘Piscine’ the French word for swimming pool, comes from the Latin Piscine which means fishpond
  • The most popular swimming stroke is Front Crawl
  • An Olympic size swimming pool can hold 700,000-850,000 gallons of water
  • On planet Earth there is 328million cubic miles of seawater which covers about 71% of the entire Earth’s surface

We hope you enjoyed these swimming and pool facts! At Premier Pools and Spas, we understand that the process of deciding, planning, and ultimately building a pool, can be a difficult one to navigate.  If you have any specific questions, don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll do our best to help guide you along the path of building your dream swimming pool.

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