George Washington Owes Library $300,000

Posted on Apr 18, 2010

Flickr / guldfisken (CC-BY)

The first president has accrued 220 years’ worth of late fees on two books he checked out from—and never returned to—a New York library. Washington borrowed “Law of Nations” and a collection of debate transcripts from the British Parliament. He is not expected to repay the debt.

BBC:

On 5 October 1789, the first president borrowed two books from what was then the only library in Manhattan - “Law of Nations,” a dissertation on international relations, and a volume of debate transcripts from Britain’s House of Commons.

George Washington did not even bother to sign his name in the borrower’s ledger. An aide simply scrawled “president” next to the title to show who had taken them out.

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.