50 Fun Facts About Library of Congress

The Library of Congress's founding act moved the capital from which city?

Philadelphia. There Congress had leaned on a city library, so the act that sent it to Washington gave it $5,000 to buy books of its own.

Before Thomas Jefferson's books rebuilt the Library of Congress, which president signed the 1800 act creating it?

John Adams. He signed the act in April 1800, yet the library treats Thomas Jefferson as its principal founder and named a building for Adams only in 1980.

The Library of Congress's first 740 books were ordered in 1800 from booksellers in which city?

London. Booksellers Cadell & Davies shipped the 740 volumes and three maps across the Atlantic in hair trunks, and they were shelved in a room of the new Capitol.

Which Founding Father wrote the 1783 report urging Congress to buy a library of its own, a plan it never adopted?

James Madison. He compiled the shopping list himself, some 550 titles in about 1,300 volumes, seventeen years before Congress finally voted money for books.

The Library of Congress lost its original collection when the Capitol burned during which war?

The War of 1812. British troops burned the Capitol in August 1814 with the 3,000-volume library inside, and within weeks Jefferson offered Congress his own books to start again.

The Capitol and the Library of Congress were burned partly to avenge American troops torching the parliament of which modern Canadian city?

Toronto. It was the town of York when Americans burned its parliament in 1813, and a British admiral on the return raid kept a Treasury account book from the Capitol as his souvenir.

Thomas Jefferson's 6,487 books, bought by Congress in 1815, reached Washington by wagon from which Virginia estate?

Monticello. Ten wagons hauled the books north in the pine cases that had shelved them, and Jefferson put most of the payment toward his debts.

Which great orator, then a New Hampshire congressman, voted against buying Jefferson's library in 1815?

Daniel Webster. He sided with Federalists who called the price exorbitant and the books too literary, too foreign and irreligious, and the purchase barely passed the House.

Jefferson organised his books into Memory, Reason and Imagination, following whose scheme of knowledge?

Francis Bacon. Jefferson kept his portrait beside Newton's and Locke's and called the three his trinity of the greatest men the world had ever produced.

The worst fire in the Library of Congress's history, in 1851, broke out on the eve of which holiday?

Christmas. The blaze took about 35,000 volumes, nearly two-thirds of Jefferson's books among them, and Congress voted money within months to replace what had burned.

Whose librarian, Charles Coffin Jewett, tried in the 1850s to make his employer the national library?

The Smithsonian. Its secretary Joseph Henry wanted a home for scientific research, so he fired Jewett in 1854 and later sent the Smithsonian's 40,000 volumes to the Library of Congress.

Physician John G. Stephenson, Librarian of Congress from 1861, left his desk to serve as a volunteer aide at which 1863 battle?

Gettysburg. He was commended for his service there, and he could be away because the assistant he had hired was already running the library for him.

Which president appointed Ainsworth Spofford, the former bookseller who ran the Library of Congress from 1864 to 1897?

Abraham Lincoln. He promoted Spofford on the last day of 1864, and over the next 32 years the onetime Cincinnati bookseller turned a shelf for lawmakers into a national library.

An 1870 law made the Library of Congress the one place where Americans register what?

Copyrights. Every claim brought two free copies of the book, map or song, and the flood of deposits forced Congress to give the library a building of its own.

In 1876 the Library of Congress was tied as the nation's largest with which city's public library?

Boston. A federal survey of 1876 ranked the two side by side, but the Library of Congress then grew so fast that it had to leave the Capitol for a building of its own.

Which Roman goddess appears in Elihu Vedder's marble mosaic on a staircase landing in the Library of Congress's Jefferson Building?

Minerva. She is shown as the Minerva of Peace, helmet and shield laid on the ground, yet she keeps hold of her spear to show that her guard never drops.

The Library of Congress's prize for popular song, first given to Paul Simon in 2007, is named for which songwriting brothers?

The Gershwins. George and Ira's papers and manuscripts are kept at the library, which is why it put the brothers' name on the prize it created in 2007.

Under Herbert Putnam, the Library of Congress began selling what to libraries around the world in 1901?

Printed catalog cards. Putnam, appointed by President McKinley, stayed 40 years, the longest term of any Librarian of Congress, and also began lending its books to other libraries.

In 1901 the Library of Congress became the first American library to hold how many volumes?

1 million. A century earlier its whole collection had been 740 volumes, housed in the new Capitol.

Which president's 1903 order moved the Founding Fathers' papers from the State Department to the Library of Congress?

Theodore Roosevelt. The Librarian of Congress, a friend of his, talked him into the order, which sent over the papers of Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and others.

The Vollbehr collection, bought for the Library of Congress in 1930, included a rare complete vellum copy of what?

The Gutenberg Bible. Congress voted $1.5 million for the collection months after the Wall Street crash, at the urging of a Mississippi congressman.

Gertrude Clarke Whittall gave the Library of Congress five instruments by which Italian maker?

Stradivari. Her gift was three violins, a viola and a cello, and she paid for concerts too, so that the instruments would be played.

Which arm of the Library of Congress, founded in 1914, gives lawmakers nonpartisan policy analysis?

The Congressional Research Service. For decades its reports went to Congress alone, until a 2018 law made the library publish them online for everyone.

Which poet did FDR appoint Librarian of Congress in 1939?

Archibald MacLeish. He used the post to urge librarians and writers to defend democracy against totalitarianism, then left in 1944 to become an Assistant Secretary of State.

Where were the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution stored during World War II?

Fort Knox. The Library of Congress, then their keeper, sent them by train with armed Secret Service agents weeks after Pearl Harbor, and they stayed in the gold vault until 1944.

After World War II, a Library of Congress mission helped set up the national parliamentary library of which country?

Japan. The National Diet Library opened in 1948, months after the American advisers came, to give Japan's lawmakers a library of the kind Congress had.

In 2010 the Library of Congress announced it would archive every public post from which social network?

Twitter. The company handed over every public tweet since 2006, but the flood grew so large that from 2018 the library kept only a selection.

Which historian did Gerald Ford nominate as Librarian of Congress in 1975?

Daniel J. Boorstin. The Pulitzer-winning author of The Discoverers founded the library's Center for the Book to promote reading and saw it expand into a third building on Capitol Hill.

Which poet served as the Library of Congress's Consultant in Poetry in 1958, the post now called Poet Laureate?

Robert Frost. He held the Washington post for a year in his eighties, and in 1961 he was back in the capital to read a poem at John F. Kennedy's inauguration.

Before the web, the Library of Congress sent its American Memory collections to schools on what?

CD-ROMs. The pilot began in 1990, and once the web took hold a few years later the library dropped the discs and put the collections online instead.

THOMAS, the online record of bills and votes launched in 1995, was replaced from 2012 by which federal website?

Congress.gov. THOMAS, named for Thomas Jefferson, had gone online in January 1995 and was switched off in July 2016 once its successor was ready.

With which First Lady did the Library of Congress found the National Book Festival in 2001?

Laura Bush. A former librarian, she had already started the Texas Book Festival as the governor's wife, and launched the national one in her first year in the White House.

The Library of Congress's Kluge Prize honours lifetime achievement in fields left out by which awards?

The Nobel Prizes. Metromedia's John W. Kluge paid for it with a $60 million gift that also set up a centre where visiting scholars can mix with members of Congress.

Carla Hayden kept her public libraries open through the 2015 unrest in which city, a year before becoming Librarian of Congress?

Baltimore. Her Pennsylvania Avenue branch sat at the centre of the protests and opened anyway, giving neighbours a safe place and winning her wide praise.

Which president nominated Carla Hayden as Librarian of Congress?

Barack Obama. He said he and Michelle had known her since her days at the Chicago Public Library, and the Senate confirmed her in July 2016.

How did Carla Hayden's time as Librarian of Congress end in May 2025?

She was fired by email. A White House personnel official wrote that President Trump had terminated her position at once, about a year before her ten-year term was due to end.

The Library of Congress holds material in about how many languages?

470. About half of its books and serials are in languages other than English, bought in part through its own offices in cities such as Cairo and New Delhi.

The Library of Congress holds more than 140,000 issues of which popular publications?

Comic books. Publishers send in new issues when they register them, which is how the library came to hold more than 12,000 titles, the oldest a 1936 Popular Comics.

The Library of Congress's second building, opened in 1939 as the Annex, was designed in which architectural style?

Art Deco. Its bronze doors show gods credited with giving people writing, among them Hermes and Odin, and one real man beside them: Sequoyah, who devised the Cherokee script.

The Library of Congress's film theatre in Washington is named for which silent-era star?

Mary Pickford. She co-founded United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith, and the theatre named for her screens films the library has preserved.

The Library of Congress stores its films in a Cold War bunker built to hold what?

Banknotes. From 1969 the bunker at Mount Pony held billions of dollars in Federal Reserve cash, ready to restart the economy east of the Mississippi after a nuclear attack.

What may a member of the public aged 16 or over do with the Library of Congress's books?

Read them on site. A reader card opens the reading rooms, but only members of Congress, their staff and the library's own employees may take books out of the building.

About how many books, maps, recordings and other items arrive at the Library of Congress each working day?

15,000. Not all of it stays: the library adds more than 10,000 items a day to its collections and offers much of the rest to other libraries, agencies and schools.

Which prisoner did the Lomaxes record for the Library of Congress?

Lead Belly. Huddie Ledbetter was serving time on the Angola prison farm when the Lomaxes arrived with their recording machine, and the songs he sang for them made his name.

Which showman left the Library of Congress nearly 4,000 books on magic and spiritualism when he died in 1926?

Harry Houdini. He spent his last years exposing fake mediums, and boasted that his library on magic and spiritualism was one of the largest in the world.

A 2010 ruling by the Librarian of Congress let Americans legally do what to their smartphones?

Jailbreak them. Every three years the Librarian decides which ways of breaking digital locks are exempt from a 1998 law, and in 2010 running unapproved apps on a phone made the list.

The Library of Congress holds the papers of 23 presidents, from George Washington to which twentieth-century president?

Calvin Coolidge. From Herbert Hoover on, each president's papers have gone to a presidential library of his own, a system FDR set in motion in 1939.

In the US, which kind of institution mainly uses the Library of Congress Classification?

Research and university libraries. Most public and school libraries shelve by Dewey's decimals instead, while this scheme files all knowledge under 21 lettered classes.

The 1507 Waldseemüller map, whose only known copy belongs to the Library of Congress, named a new continent after which explorer?

Amerigo Vespucci. The map put 'America' across the southern landmass in his honour, the first time the name appeared, and it then lay forgotten in a German castle until 1901.

The Librarian of Congress adds 25 titles a year to which list?

National Film Registry. A film must be at least ten years old to get in, and Congress set the list up in 1988 partly to protect classics from being recut or colorized.