A man finally decided to return his overdue library book – a whopping 37 years late.
He borrowed the The Horizon Book of Ancient Rome from The Louis Riel Library, in the city of Winnipeg, Canada, in October 1986.
Now the mystery man has brought it back, despite never actually reading it.
He said: ‘I have always known where this book was, on my shelf in full view – haunting me, taunting me, invading my dreams.
‘I had been afraid of returning it as I didn’t know there was a cap on late fees and wrongly imagined the fee to be in the thousands of dollars.
‘Since 1986, I have moved 28 times and always knew exactly where this book was.’
The man was inspired last month, after he heard about how Jennifer Walton returned a copy of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye 33 years late.
She had taken the novel out from a library in Winnipeg on November 10, 1989, while studying at Glenlawn College.
Jennifer said: ‘I felt very badly that I had had their book for so many years.
‘I walked right in the front door and I said “I have an overdue book to return” and she got ready to scan it and I said “No it’s actually much more overdue than that”.’
She was referring to the fact that the book was so old it did not have a barcode on it.
The most recent late-returner heard all about this and ended up looking into the record for the most overdue library book.
At first, he thought he would hold onto his for long enough to break the record but ‘realised it was not the proper thing to do’.
He would have been waiting a long time anyway, as The Guinness world record for the most overdue library book was borrowed in 1668 and returned 288 years later.
It was returned to Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge University.
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