At 4 feet 7 and 65 pounds in 1920, future Honolulu resident Aileen Riggin Soule was not only the smallest American Olympian gold medalist for decades, she was also the youngest.

The New York eighth-grader won the first gold medal ever awarded in women’s springboard diving when competing on the inaugural U.S. women’s swimming and diving team at age 14 and 3 months.

At the time of her death in 2002 at age 96, she also was America’s oldest living Olympian. Soule is the only U.S. woman to win medals in swimming and diving; in the 1924 Paris Olympics, she took silver in the 3-meter springboard and bronze in the 100-meter backstroke.

Inducted into the U.S. Swimming Hall of Fame in 1967, Soule was feted at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. When asked if she had any goals in addition to attending the Olympics, she replied, "Yes, I’d like to continue … life in general, that is."

Soule was a fixture at Hawaii and U.S. Masters Swimming Championships through the 1990s. She lived in an apartment in Waikiki, where she swam off Sans Souci 3 miles a week into her 90s.

» The 1920 Olympics in Antwerp were the first in which the Olympic Oath was voiced, the first in which doves were released to symbolize peace and the first in which the Olympic Flag was flown. Also, Hawaii’s Duke Kahanamoku successfully defended his gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle, his medals coming eight years apart.

» The 1924 Olympics was the second Games to be held in Paris and the last organized under the presidency of Pierre de Coubertin, who founded the modern Olympics in 1896. This was the first time the Olympic motto — Citius, Altius, Fortius (Faster, Higher, Stronger) — was used, as well as the debut for the standard 50-meter pool with marked lanes.

» The 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam were the first in which the Olympic Flame was lit to open the Games. It was also the first time that the parade of nations started with Greece and ended with the host country.