Jacques-Yves Cousteau was born on June 11, 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, France.
Cousteau moved with his family to New York. At summer camp in Vermont, he started diving as part of the camp’s policy to clean the lake, even without proper diving goggles at that time.
Upon returning to France, his parents sent him to a boarding school in France.
In 1930, Cousteau passed the difficult exams for the French Naval Academy in Brest, where he trained for two years before spending a year at sea.
During the war years, he took an underwater camera to the waters around the French Mediterranean islands of Embiez, when the underwater footage called “18 Meters Deep” emerged.
Cousteau shared his plans to create underwater documentaries with the British Thomas Loel Guinness. Guinness decided that the best way he could help was to provide Cousteau with a ship. The name of the ship was Calypso, where Cousteau was destined to become familiar to TV audiences worldwide.
Already with some sponsors to equip and fund a crew, he decided to raise more money by writing the book “The Silent World,” a book about his pioneering diving adventures.
In 1956, Cousteau released his first color documentary “The Silent World.” The film won the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1957.
In 1960, Cousteau’s new documentary, “The Golden Fish,” won the Oscar for Best Short Film.
In 1963, divers began to be called “oceanonauts” by Cousteau.
The documentary “World Without Sun” earned Cousteau his third Oscar.
In the years 1968-76, Cousteau produced his most well-known work, the TV documentary series “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau,” which aired for eight seasons. His sons, Philippe and Jean-Michel, were also part of the filming. The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau inspired another new generation of divers and marine biologists.
In 1985, on Cousteau’s 75th birthday, President Ronald Reagan presented him with the highest civilian honor in the U.S., the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That same year, Cousteau invited Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro, to dinner on the Calypso and persuaded him to release 80 political prisoners.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau died of a heart attack on June 25, 1997, in Paris, at the age of 87.
ISAURA LA COUR
Journalist & Associate-Editor
isaurathebrasilians@gmail.com