Short answers, pulled from the story.
Surfing originated independently in multiple cultures. In Peru, the Moche culture rode reed watercraft called caballito de totora back to shore as early as around 200 CE. In Polynesia, surfing dates to around 400 CE, with stand-up surfing on boards invented in Hawaii. West African communities in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Senegal, and Cameroon also developed surfing independently, with documented accounts from the 1640s onward.
In July 1885, three teenage Hawaiian princes, David Kawananakoa, Edward Keliiahonui, and Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, surfed the mouth of the San Lorenzo River in Santa Cruz on custom-shaped redwood boards. George Freeth gave public surfing exhibitions at Venice of America in July 1907, and Duke Kahanamoku spread surfing further across the United States and Australia after winning Olympic gold medals in swimming in 1912 and 1920.
Surfing was added by the International Olympic Committee in 2016, with competition beginning at the 2020 Summer Olympics held in Japan. The first gold medalists were Italo Ferreira of Brazil in the men's event and Carissa Moore of Hawaii in the women's event.
As of 2023, the Guinness Book of World Records recognized a wave ride of 26.2 meters (86 feet) by Sebastian Steudtner at Nazare, Portugal as the largest wave ever surfed.
A January 2018 study by the University of Exeter found surfers three times as likely as non-surfers to carry antibiotic-resistant E. coli, attributed to swallowing roughly ten times as much seawater as swimmers. Up to 66% of surfing injuries result from collision with a surfboard. Additional risks include surfer's ear, a bone growth that narrows the ear canal after repeated cold-water exposure, and surfer's myelopathy, a rare spinal cord injury causing lower-body paralysis that can be permanent.
Mary Ann Hawkins was a pioneering American surfer inspired by Duke Kahanamoku's surfing in the late 1920s. On the 12th of September, 1936, she won California's first women's paddleboard race at the Santa Monica Breakwater. In 1938, she won both the women's half-mile paddleboard race and the Venice Breakwater event on the same day, and was recognized by peers as the best tandem surfer of her era.