Duke Kahanamoku was an amazing athlete and is also responsible for single-handedly popularizing the sport of surfing! Duke broke a f*ck load of swimming speed records and won a bunch of gold medals in the Olympics. He then integrated surfing into swiming exhibitions that he was asked to give in the US and Australia – and the rest was history.
Not only did he make a MASSIVE contribution to American cool, he also saved mu’fuckin’ lives! On June 14, 1925 at Newport Beach , Kahanamoku saved eight drowning men from a capsized fishing vessel! He loaded them one by one on his surf board and brought them in to shore – thus starting the tradition of lifeguards having rescue boards!
Duke was such a cool guy – too bad most surfers these days are territorial a-holes.
*Dedicated to Ohio’s only native female Great Lakes surfer, Marikate Workman.
This was cool to see. When I was in Hawaii, there were all sorts of monuments to Duke all over the place. Then, we had breakfast in a restaurant called…Dukes… which had dozens of memorabilia, facts, photographs and other stuff everywhere. Just from sitting there you got to learn a lot about Duke, it was cool as hell.