1. Diana Nyad has written four books and articles for various publications, hosted the public radio program The Savvy Traveler, appeared on the television shows CBS News Sunday Morning and Dancing with the Stars, and been a long-time contributor to the public radio programs All Things Considered and Marketplace.
Diana Nyad did not use fins or a cage, but did swim with a protective jellyfish suit, shark divers, and electronic shark repellent devices.
Diana Nyad's mother was a great-granddaughter of Charlotte N Winslow, the inventor of Mrs Winslow's Soothing Syrup, a popular morphine-based medicine for children's teething pain that was manufactured from 1849 until the 1930s.
Diana Nyad is a great-grandniece of women's-rights activist Laura Curtis Bullard.
Notaras, who had a complex history involving legal issues and a conviction for smuggling, adopted Diana Nyad following the marriage.
Diana Nyad was enrolled at the private Pine Crest School in the mid-1960s, swimming under the tutelage of Olympian and Hall of Fame coach Jack Nelson who, she has said, molested her beginning when she was age 14 and continued until she graduated from high school.
Diana Nyad has said she learned several years later that another girl who trained under Nelson had been molested, and said the two of them had brought their accusation to the headmaster of the school, but that no clear action was taken and Nelson resigned at the end of that school year.
Diana Nyad won two Florida state high school championships in the backstroke at 100 yards.
Diana Nyad dreamed of swimming in the 1968 Summer Olympics, but in 1966 she spent three months in bed with endocarditis, an infection of the heart, and when she began swimming again she had lost speed.
Diana Nyad then enrolled at Lake Forest College in Illinois, where she resumed swimming, concentrating on distance events.
Diana Nyad soon came to the attention of Buck Dawson, director of the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Florida, who introduced her to marathon swimming.
Diana Nyad began training at his Girl's Camp "Camp Ak-O-Mak" in Magnetawan, Ontario and set a women's course record of 4 hours and 23 minutes in her first race, a 10-mile swim in Lake Ontario in July 1970, finishing 10th overall.
Diana Nyad has written four books: Other Shores about her life and distance swimming, Basic Training for Women describing a physical fitness program for women, Boss of Me: The Keyshawn Johnson Story about NFL wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson, and Find a Way about her quest to swim across the Florida Straits.
Diana Nyad has written for The New York Times, Newsweek, and other publications.
Diana Nyad succeeded Rudy Maxa as host of the public radio program The Savvy Traveler, produced by Minnesota Public Radio, in July 2001 and remained host until the show ended in 2004.
Diana Nyad was a regular contributor to the CBS News television show Sunday Morning.
Diana Nyad played in the 1979 Women's World Open Squash Championship, where she lost in the first round to Swedish player Katarina Due-Boje.
Diana Nyad then moved her training to Key West and, while waiting for favorable weather conditions, she embarked on a 24-hour swim.
Diana Nyad moved her training site from the Caribbean island of St Maarten to Key West, Florida in June 2011.
Diana Nyad was to be escorted by a paddler in a kayak equipped with an electronic shark repellent known as a Shark Shield.
Thirty-three years after her first attempt in 1978, Diana Nyad entered the water again at Havana on August 7,2011, at 7:45PM, with a CNN news team on board her support ship to provide live coverage of her swim, which involved electronic "Shark Shields" but no shark cage.
Diana Nyad said she had been suffering shoulder pain since her third hour in the water, but what made her abandon the effort was a flare-up of her asthma, such that, throughout the final hour, she could only swim a few strokes before repeatedly having to roll on her back to catch her breath.
On September 23,2011, Diana Nyad began a third attempt at the Cuba-to-Florida swim, again without a shark cage, but stopped after 41 hours, about 67 nautical miles through the 103 nautical miles passage, because of jellyfish and Portuguese man-of-war stings and after currents pushed her off course.
Diana Nyad was accompanied by vessels using electronic 'Shark Shield' deterrent devices, and at times by shark divers.
At approximately 1:55 pm EDT on September 2,2013, Diana Nyad reached the beach in Key West, about 53 hours after she began her journey.
On September 10,2013, Diana Nyad appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show explaining that while she swims she remembers Stephen Hawking books, sings, counts numbers, and has vivid hallucinations of The Wizard of Oz and the yellow brick road.
On September 12,2013, Diana Nyad said, "We swam fair and square, squeaky clean across that thing".
Diana Nyad has expressed her belief that wearing the jellyfish-protection suit was a life-and-death measure that for her superseded the traditions of the sport.
Diana Nyad's crossing from Cuba to Florida has never been formally ratified due to the lack of independent observers and incomplete records.
From October 8 to 10,2013, Diana Nyad participated in "Swim for Relief" by doing a 48-hour continuous swim in New York City's Herald Square in a specially constructed, 120-foot long, two lane pool.
On March 4,2014, Diana Nyad was announced as one of the celebrities to compete on the 18th season of Dancing with the Stars, in which she finished in last place.
In 1989, Diana Nyad was a guest correspondent on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries about Alcatraz.
Diana Nyad assisted on a segment that detailed real-life, current reenactments of both kayakers and a swimmer attempting to traverse San Francisco Bay.
Diana Nyad appeared in the Macy Gray music video for the song "Bang, Bang" in 2014.
Diana Nyad was inducted into the United States National Women's Sports Hall of Fame in 1986.
Diana Nyad is an International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame Honoree and an ISHOF Al Schoenfield Media Award recipient.
Diana Nyad is a Hall of Famer at her Lake Forest College in Illinois and at Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale.