(WYTV) – The Guinness World Record-holder for the highest library book fine ever paid goes to Emily Canellos-Simms. She didn’t even borrow the book.
In 2002, she found a copy of “Days and Deeds,” a book of children’s in her mother’s house, due April 15, 1995, which was 47 years prior.
Emily gave the Kewanee, Illinois public library a check for more than $345.
Shortly after he became president, George Washington borrowed a book called “The Law of Nations” from the New York Library and didn’t return it for the rest of his life.
In 2010, the head librarian joked that they would appreciate having it back. About a month later, the Mount Vernon estate did return the book, 221 years overdue.
A copy of Charles Darwin’s “Insectivorous Plants” finally made its way back to a Sydney, Australia library after someone borrowed it in 1889 and someone else returned it in 2011.
Australia wasn’t even Australia when the book was borrowed: the colonies of Australia united and became a single country in 1901.
A copy of “Facts I Ought to Know About the Government of My Country” almost hit 200 years overdue.
A Mansfield, Massachusetts man returned this book to the New Bedford Library in 2009 after his mother had taken it out in 1910.
For 63 years, a copy of “The Adventures of Pinocchio” was missing from Warwick, England’s Library.
One day, the library offered an amnesty on fines, and the book suddenly appeared. The fine would have been around $5,000.
“The Real Book About Snakes” was out of an Ohio library from 1972 until 2013, a total of 41 years.
Enclosed with the precise fine of $299.30 (for two cents a day) was a letter reading, “Sorry I’ve kept this book so long, but I’m a really slow reader. My apologies!”
