Today in History February 3rd COUSTEAU PUBLISHES THE SILENT WORLD: February 3, 1953 On February 3, 1953, French oceanographer Jacques-Yves Cousteau publishes his most famous and lasting work, The Silent World.Born in Saint-Andrý-de-Cubzac, France, in 1910, Cousteau was trained at the Brest Naval School. While serving in the French navy, he began his underwater explorations, filming shipwrecks and the underwater world of the Mediterranean Sea through a glass bowl. At the time, the only available system for underwater breathing involved a diver being tethered to the surface, and Cousteau sought to develop a self-contained device.In 1943, with the aid of engineer ýmile Gagnan, he designed the Aqua-Lung, the world's first self-contained underwater breathing apparatus (scuba). With the Aqua-Lung, the largely unexplored world lying beneath the ocean surface was open to Cousteau as never before. He developed underwater cameras and photography and was employed by the French navy to explore navy shipwrecks. In his free time, he explored ancient wrecks and studied underwater sea life.In 1948, he published his first work, Through 18 Meters of Water, and in 1950 Lord Guinness, a British patron, bought him an old British minesweeper to use for his explorations. Cousteau converted the ship into an oceanographic vessel and christened it the Calypso. In 1953, he published The Silent World, written with Frýdýric Dumas, and began work on a film version of the book with film director Louis Malle. Three years later, The Silent World was released to world acclaim. The film, which revealed to the public the hidden universe of tropical fish, whales, and walruses, won Best Documentary at the Academy Awards and the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.With the success of the film, Cousteau retired from the navy to devote himself to oceanography. He welcomed geologists, archaeologists, zoologists, environmentalists, and other scientists aboard the Calypso and led numerous excursions to the world's great bodies of water, from the Red Sea to the Amazon River. He headed the Conshelf Saturation Dive Program, in which men lived and worked for extended time periods at considerable depths along the continental shelves.His many books include The Living Sea (1963), Three Adventures: Galýpagos, Titicaca, the Blue Holes (1973), and Jacques Cousteau: The Ocean World (1985). He also produced several more award-winning films and scores of television documentaries about the ocean, making him a household name. He saw firsthand the damage done to the marine ecosystems by humans and was an outspoken and persuasive environmentalist. Cousteau died in 1997. ------------------------------------------------------------------ MORE GENERAL INTEREST 1924 Woodrow Wilson dies 1966 Lunik 9 soft-lands on lunar surface 1994 Clinton ends Vietnam trade embargo historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=general&month=10272954&day=10272968 AUTOMOTIVE 1881 The New World historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=automotive&month=10272954&day=10272968 CIVIL WAR 1865 Hampton Roads Conference historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=civil&month=10272954&day=10272968 COLD WAR 1950 Klaus Fuchs arrested for passing atomic bomb information to Soviets historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=coldwar&month=10272954&day=10272968 CRIME 1780 An early American mass murder changes common perceptions of crime historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=crime&month=10272954&day=10272968 ENTERTAINMENT 1959 Plane crash kills popular musicians historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=entertainment&month=10272954&day=10272968 LITERARY 1820 Keats falls deathly ill historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=literary&month=10272954&day=10272968 OLD WEST 1889 Belle Starr murdered in Oklahoma historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=oldwest&month=10272954&day=10272968 PRESIDENTIAL 1994 Clinton ends trade embargo of Vietnam historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=presidential&month=10272954&day=10272968 VIETNAM WAR 1955 Diem institutes limited agrarian reforms historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=vietnamwar&month=10272954&day=10272968 WALL STREET 1913 Income Tax Amendment Takes Effect historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=wallstreet&month=10272954&day=10272968 WORLD WAR I 1917 U.S. breaks diplomatic relations with Germany historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=worldwari&month=10272954&day=10272968 WORLD WAR II 1944 U.S. troops capture the Marshall Islands historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=worldwarii&month=10272954&day=10272968