According to Jeff Wiltse, author of Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America, this decline was the direct result of desegregation. Everybody else in America kept right on swimming though, diving, and using the crawl stroke. The first indoor swimming pool was built in England in 1862. From the baths of ancient Rome to today's multi-faceted backyard resorts, pools have undergone a number of evolutionary steps that in aggregate have made recreational bodies of water what they are today. A black and white photo of female athletes lining up on the starting blocks before an Olympic swimming race in 1948 A black and white photo of female athletes lining up on the starting blocks before an Olympic swimming race in 1948. Swimming activity has been around for thousands of years. An Amateur Swimming Association of Great Britain was organized in 1880 with more than 300 members. And African-American children drown at nearly three times the overall rate. A Massachusetts law of 1773 said that people couldn’t go swimming on Sundays (because they should go to church instead), so at least some people knew how to swim. "Intelligent, compelling social history." Celebrate Black History Month with the International Swimming Hall of Fame by learning about the rich history and inspirational stories of Black Swimmers of the past, present and future. The main swimming styles were the breaststroke and the recently developed sidestroke. After observing natives in Australia swimming in a style similar to that of the Native American Flying Gull, Englishman Fred Cavill began to practice the freestyle, teaching it to his sons. Swimming was included and there were four swimming contests held. Although humans have been swimming for thousands of years, swimming only became a competitive sport in the early 1800s. In 1875, Matthew Webb ignited public interest in swimming when he became the first person to swim across the English Channel. Origins of the sport. It opened in 1868 and served a neighborhood where most of the homes did not have baths. About the same time, Benjamin Franklin knew how to swim. In the history of swimming, this was the first time that the Olympics specified if an event was freestyle or breaststroke. Alfred Hajos became the first Olympic swimming champion at the 1896 Athens Olympics. News, author interviews, critics' picks and more. A Brief, Humiliating History Of Swimming In Gym Class. His son Richard Cavill won a race with this stroke, and described the swimming style as a way of "crawling" through the water, according to FINA.org. According to USA Swimming, over 58 percent of African-American children can't swim. That got us here at the BPP asking questions about, well, race and swimming. According to the book Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming in America, the Cabot Street Bath in Boston was the first swimming pool in the U.S. The men’s and women’s programmes are almost identical, as they contain the same number of events, with only one difference: the freestyle distance is 800 metres for women and 1,500 metres for men. They were: 100 m, 100 m for sailors, the 500 m and the 1200 m competitions. Jeff Wiltse, author of Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America “Strokes of Genius is so much more than a history of swimming—it is an expertly guided tour of humans’ long relationship with the aquatic realm.