Happy International Find a Pay Phone Booth Day! It’s increasingly rare to find a working payphone as I discussed in this story last month but it’s almost impossible to find one in an actual phone booth. However, I do know where you’ll find one!

It’s in the lobby of the Athena Grand movie theater in Athens, Ohio. There’s even a sign posted inside that let’s folks know that it really works.

It was on this day in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell made the world’s first ever telephone call. It was to his assistant in the next room. Less than two years later, Thomas Doolittle created the first phone booth which he called a “telephone cabinet.”

While this invention would change the world in ways he may never have dreamed, Bell refused to have a telephone in his study because he feared it would be too much of a distraction from his work. I suspect he was a fan of the phone booth because you would have to be purposeful in going out to use the phone rather than spending hours in an endless conversation at home. 

If you’re serious about celebrating today, go out and look for a phone booth! If you find one, maybe convince some friends to engage in the age old tradition of phonebooth stuffing! That’s where you see how many people you can fit into a phone booth. Wikipedia tells me that on March 20, 1959, students in South Africa set a world record when 25 of them were able to squeeze at least the greater portions of their bodies into a standard phone booth. 

See if you can beat that!

And if you can’t, maybe just take a selfie and report back here where you found your phone booth. I enjoy hearing about pay phones out in the wild!