August 22, 1950: A 41-Year-Old Egyptian Wins the First Cross-Channel Race

Today in 1950 · Tuesday, August 22, 1950

Marathon swimmer Greta Andersen at Atlantic City in a 1958 press photo — the 1948 Olympic champion became the outstanding woman of the Daily Mail's cross-Channel race series that launched this day in 1950

Marathon swimmer Greta Andersen at Atlantic City in a 1958 press photo — the 1948 Olympic champion became the outstanding woman of the Daily Mail's cross-Channel race series that launched this day in 1950 · UPI press photo, 1958, published without copyright notice, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

On this day in 1950, Egyptian marathon swimmer Hassan Abdel Rehim climbed out of the surf on the English coast having crossed the Channel from France in about ten hours and fifty minutes — winning the first Daily Mail Cross-Channel Race at the age of 41 and breaking the crossing record.

It was no beginner's triumph. Abdel Rehim had crossed the Channel in 1948 in 17 hours 38 minutes and again in 1949 in 15 hours 58 minutes; on his third crossing he cut nearly five hours off his own best. The Daily Mail's newly organized international race — with swimmers from several nations plunging in together off the French coast — turned Channel swimming from a solitary feat into a spectator sport, and Dover's museum still commemorates the era as the sport's 1950s heyday.

Newspaper readers in a Britain still under postwar rationing were handed a summer story with everything: an international field, a record broken, and a middle-aged champion who proved the Channel respects persistence over youth.

Also on this day

  • UN mediator Sir Owen Dixon ended his mission to resolve the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan without an agreement.
  • In Korea, UN forces continued consolidating the Pusan Perimeter line ahead of the next North Korean offensive.
  • Died this day: Frank Phillips, co-founder of Phillips Petroleum.

🎵 On the radio that week: America’s No. 1 song was “Goodnight Irene” by Gordon Jenkins and The Weavers (Billboard best sellers) — TIME magazine sniffed that the Weavers' polished version was 'dehydrated' and 'prettied up' — America bought it anyway. That sound never really left — we recreate 1950s doo-wop and slow-dance ballads every week: read the stories behind our songs or listen on the lovesong1950s channel.
🎬 At the movies: Billy Wilder's “Sunset Boulevard” had just opened at Radio City Music Hall — 51-year-old silent star Gloria Swanson beginning her legendary comeback as Norma Desmond.
⚾ In sports: The Yankees struck the first blow of the AL stretch drive, taking two of three from first-place Detroit at Yankee Stadium — a 13-6 rout and a 7-5 win trimming the Tigers' lead to 1.5 games.

Sources: Dover.uk.com: Channel swim record, Aug 22, 1950 · Channel Swimming Dover: 1950 Daily Mail race · Dover Museum: Channel swimming's 1950s heyday · Wikipedia: August 1950 · Billboard best-seller charts, 1950 (issue scans) · Variety National Boxoffice Survey, 1950 (Lantern scans) · Retrosheet 1950 game logs and box scores. Every fact above is drawn from the records linked here — no dramatization, no invented details.

More from this series: Today in 1950 — the daily archive · every post from August 2026

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