Test Your Knowledge #15

What celebrated swimmer keeps trying to swim the Flodia Straits?

Many water-related stories have been in the news in the past several weeks — including itemsconnectedto the four questions here.

Do you know the answers?

1. Earlier this month, 61-year-old Diana Nyad was in the news for her unsuccessful attempt to swim from Cuba to Florida. What this theathlete’s first, second or third try at crossing the Florida Strait?

2. Why was aveteran New Yorklifeguardfired from his job in 2007? (His caserecently made headlines again when an appeals court reinstated his discrimination lawsuit.) Here’s a hint:The reason he was fired had to do with swimwear.

3. Why are health experts nowadvising people not to jump or dive into natural bodies of water — such as rivers and lakes — or if they do, to use a nose clip or pinch their nostrils shut with their thumb and forefinger?

4. ‘Octomom’ Nadya Suleman was back in the news recently — this time because of her backyard aboveground pool. What was the problem?

To find out how you did, see below.

Here are the answers:

1. It was Diana Nyad’s second attempt to swim the Florida Strait. Her first attempt was in 1978when she was 28 years old.

2. Roy Lester, a61-year old lifeguard (coincidentally, the same age as Diana Nyad), was fired in 2007 for refusing to wear Speedos during an annual swimming test; he wanted to wear bicycle shorts instead. Lester, a triathlete, had been a lifeguard for 40 years when he was fired. He sued the New York state Office of Parks, Recreation and [ironically] Historic Preservation for age discrimination. The lawsuit was dismissed, but Lesterrecently made headlines again when the lawsuit was reinstated by an appeals court.

3. To avoid being killed by brain-eating amoebas. No…we’re not kidding. The following comes from NPR.org:

Brain-eating amoebas have killed three people so far this summer. The victims include a 9-year-old Virginia boy and a 16-year-old Florida girl; both apparently became infected while swimming in warm, stagnant water. The bug crawls into the brain through the nose and causes primary amoebic meningoencephalitis, a disease of the central nervous system that is extremely rare but almost always fatal.

4. From TMZ.com:

Octo got a ticket from the City of La Habra [in Southern California] for having a Doughboy aboveground pool in her backyard without a proper permit.The city fined her $100, with a deadline for either removing the pool or getting the permit. But Octo refuses to budge, because she believes some vindictive neighbors have unfairly singled her out for something that is pretty common in her neighborhood.So now the fine has swelled to $600. But all this fuss over the pool ignores the bigger problem — What’s Octo doing with a pool in her backyard when she has 14 kids she can barely control?

How did you do on our wet current-events quiz?