'Phone Booth Packing' Returns

On Wednesday morning, students at St. Mary's college in Moraga, California, tried to re-live old memories and break a long-standing record, by hosting a Phone Booth Packing competition - where groups compete to see who can pile in the most number of people into a phone booth!

The college students were especially interested in this sport because the current US record for Phone Booth Packing is held by alumni of the college, who managed to fit in 24 people in 1984.

While the modern day Phone Booth Packers could cram only 22 students in the booth and were unable to break the record, the whole event was a lot of fun.

Though it may sound strange today, Phone Booth Packing was a big craze in college campuses in the 1950's. Started by a South African student, who still holds the world record for fitting in 25 people, it soon became a worldwide phenomenon, with college groups competing against each other and against other colleges.

As with any fun 'sport', this one too had many different adaptations - In Britain, one of the rules was to make or receive a phone call whilst being crammed in. Students in Fresno tried their version of the sport by first immersing a phone booth into a swimming pool and then cramming inside.

Through the years, people tried all sorts of tricks including tilting the box to the ground as well as finding 'larger' phone booths to try fit more people in. While they succeeded, they were all disqualified for 'cheating' and the original record set in 1958, remains untouched till this day!

Now that the students at St. Mary's College have started the trend again, more colleges may adopt this fun competition and hopefully, someone will figure out how to break the 51-year old record.

oldetimecooking.com, library-thinkquest.org