The Origin of Planking: First Photographed Plank?

Surely by now you’ve heard of ‘Planking,’ a quickly growing fad that involves participants of the game lying face down in unusual and many times unsafe locations.

Individuals performing a ‘plank’ are required to have both hands touching the sides of the body, feet together and pointed at the ground, and then must be photographed so that others can assess the difficulty factor involved. Extra points are of course rewarded for planking in the most original and public locations possible.

While looking into the history of planking, which I won’t go into- I will, however, say it originally was called the ‘lying down game,’ and is claimed to have been started in Europe- I stumbled upon what is probably the first known, albeit unintentional, photo of the crazy game.

Courtesy of LIFE, Voila!

Got anything older? Chime in.

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