Jacques Cousteau Facts
Jacques Cousteau Facts
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| Interesting Jacques Cousteau Facts: |
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| Jacques Cousteau was the youngest of two boys born to Daniel and Elisabeth Cousteau. His older brother was Pierre-Antoine. |
| As a child Jacques suffered from stomach problems as well as anemia. |
| Jacques learned to swim at the age of four, and developed a life-long interest in water from then on. |
| As a child Jacques became fascinated with mechanical items and even took a movie camera apart to learn how it operated. |
| Jacques was not a great student and was sent to boarding school when he was 13. |
| While working in the French Navy information service after graduating as a gunnery officer, Jacques began shooting film while in the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean. |
| Following his near-deadly car accident in 1933, Jacques began swimming in the Mediterranean Sea as part of his rehabilitation. |
| Phillippe Tailliez, a friend of Jacques, gave him goggles to allow him to see underwater. This inspired Jacques to explore the world under water. |
| In 1940 Jacques and his wife took refuge in Megreve when Paris was taken over by the Nazis. Jacques continued his sea exploration and in 1943 met a French engineer who he experimented with scuba diving apparatus. |
| Jacques and Emile Gagnan worked together and developed the first device that enabled divers to remain underwater for long periods - called the aqua-lung. |
| Jacques Cousteau also helped to create a waterproof camera that would be able to handle the high pressure of being submerged in very deep water. |
| Jacques Cousteau made two early documentaries about underwater exploration, titled 18 Meters Deep, and Shipwrecks. |
| Jacques Cousteau was awarded the Legion of Honor and several other medals from France for his efforts in the French Resistance during World War II. |
| In 1948 Jacques and other expert divers went on an expedition to find the Mahdia, a Roman shipwreck. This was the first expedition involving self-contained diving gear. It was the beginning of underwater archaeology. |
| In 1953, in an effort to raise financing for his underwater exploration, Jacques published the book The Silent World. It went on to be made into a film. |
| Jacques became well-known in the media and on TV through books, movies and television shows. |
| Jacques founded the Cousteau Society in 1973 to bring awareness to the underwater ecosystems. |
| Jacques began to plea for ocean habitat protection in the 1908s. |
| After the Calypso, Jacques' exploration vessel, was sunk in 1996, he tried to raise money for a new one. |
| Jacques died suddenly in 1997 at the age of 87, before building his new vessel. |
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