Ever Wonder Where We
Got the Term “Swan Dive?”

See if you can find a photo of a swan diving.

Swans don't do it. Swallows do.

This photo was taken by Wallace G. Levison, a Life magazine photographer, in Brooklyn, New York, on June 26, 1886, and subsequently published in Life magazine.

The boy's name was Jamie Swan.

I can find no source that links this photo to the origin of the term “swan dive,” but neither can I find a documented use of the term prior to the publication of this image.

I say the photo triggered the expression.

What say Ye?