60 Fun Facts About Reading

How many raised dots make up a full braille cell?

That gives 64 possible combinations, counting the empty cell used as a word space.

How old was Louis Braille when he first presented his tactile reading code in 1824?

He had been blinded at three by an accident with an awl in his father's harness workshop.

Braille's code was an improvement on 'night writing', a tactile system invented by whom?

The system got its name when it was considered as a way for soldiers to communicate silently in the dark.

What term did Émile Javal coin for the short, rapid jumps the eyes make while reading?

He discovered them in 1879 with a mirror placed beside the page, disproving the idea that eyes glide smoothly along a line.

In his Confessions, Saint Augustine remarks on which bishop's then-unusual habit of reading silently?

Reading aloud was the norm in antiquity, and silent reading stayed remarkable until spaces between words came back in the late Middle Ages.

Which teacher coined 'speed reading' and launched Reading Dynamics in Washington, D.C. in 1959?

She noticed in 1958 that sweeping her hand across a page helped her eyes move more smoothly, and built a method on it.

Roughly how fast do people read normally for comprehension?

Skimming runs at 700 words per minute and above, but comprehension drops sharply.

Roughly what share of the population has dyslexia?

Up to 20% of people may show some degree of the symptoms, and it was once called word blindness.

Bi Sheng invented the world's first movable type around 1040. What was it made of?

The oldest surviving book printed with movable metal type is the Korean Jikji of 1377.

In which city did Johannes Gutenberg print his Bible in the 1450s?

Of the 158 to 180 copies printed, 49 survive in substantial part and 21 are complete.

The Gutenberg Bible is also known by the number of lines on most of its pages. How many?

The first pages had 40 lines; the count was raised part-way through, presumably to save paper.

Which Buddhist text, printed on 11 May 868, is considered the oldest dated printed book?

It was found in the Dunhuang caves in 1900 by a Daoist monk and sold to the explorer Aurel Stein in 1907.

What is the name for the paged book format that gradually replaced the scroll in the ancient world?

The word comes from the Latin caudex, a tree trunk; the poet Martial praised the format's convenience in the first century.

Before paper, the pages of early codices were typically parchment or vellum, made from what?

Parchment was rarely used for scrolls because it made them too heavy.

The first Penguin paperbacks of 1935 were sold through Woolworths for what price?

Allen Lane said the idea came from the dismal reading on offer at Exeter St Davids railway station.

Which German publisher's 1931 format, with colour-coded genre covers, did Penguin copy?

The Second World War cut the Albatross experiment short, but its standard size and typographic covers lived on.

Melvil Dewey developed his decimal classification in 1873 while working at the library of which college?

He published it in 1876, and by 2009 it was in use in 200,000 libraries in at least 135 countries.

Whose 6,487 books did Congress buy to rebuild its library after the British burned Washington in 1814?

Another fire in 1851 destroyed two-thirds of those books; the main building now carries his name.

The Bodleian Library, founded in 1602, is the main research library of which university?

With over 13 million printed items it is Britain's second-largest library after the British Library.

The Bodleian is one of how many legal deposit libraries entitled to a copy of every UK publication?

Under Irish law it may also request a copy of each book published in the Republic of Ireland.

The first modern tax-supported public library, opened in 1833, was in which small New Hampshire town?

Boston's public library followed in 1848, and Andrew Carnegie later paid for 1,689 libraries across the United States.

Which Roman accidentally burned part of the Library of Alexandria during his civil war in 48 BC?

Estimates of the library's holdings run from 40,000 to 700,000 scrolls, and it seems to have survived or been rebuilt afterwards.

The Book of Kells, an illuminated Gospel book from around 800 AD, is on display at which library?

Visitors see two pages at a time, rotated every twelve weeks; the leaves are high-quality calf vellum.

How many digits has an ISBN had since the standard changed in 2007?

The scheme grew out of a nine-digit Standard Book Number that WHSmith planned in 1965.

In which year did Amazon launch the first Kindle e-reader?

The device was developed by Amazon's Lab126 subsidiary, and a larger-screened Kindle DX followed in 2009.

What was Amazon's internal codename for the original Kindle?

The Kindle name itself came from branding consultants Michael Cronan and Karin Hibma, who liked that it means to light a fire.

UNESCO's World Book Day, 23 April, was fixed on the death date of which author?

Spain first marked it on his birthday, 7 October, in 1926; in Catalonia it merges with Sant Jordi, the day of books and roses.

On which date is International Literacy Day observed each year?

UNESCO declared it in 1966 and first celebrated it the following year.

Which 1943 novella is the second most translated work ever published, behind only the Bible?

By November 2024 it existed in 600 languages and dialects; its author's works were banned in Vichy France.

Which seven-volume French novel holds the Guinness World Record for longest novel?

Proust's first volume, Swann's Way, was rejected by several publishers in 1913, and its madeleine episode is the book's most famous passage.

What is the Japanese term for acquiring books and letting them pile up unread?

It dates from Meiji-era slang and also covers the unread books sitting on your shelf 'for later'.

Who hosted Reading Rainbow throughout its 1983–2006 run on PBS?

He was best known for Roots when the show began; it went on to win 26 Emmys and a Peabody.

In which year did Oprah Winfrey start her television book club?

Jonathan Franzen publicly bristled at The Corrections being chosen, and a fabricated memoir later caused its biggest scandal.

Which James Frey memoir, an Oprah pick, was outed as largely fabricated?

Winfrey confronted Frey and his publisher Nan Talese on a live episode.

How many different words does Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat use?

He was reacting to a 1954 Life article by John Hersey attacking dull Dick and Jane primers, and later called it the book he was proudest of.

Editor Bennett Cerf bet Dr. Seuss $50 that he could not write a book using how many distinct words?

The result was Green Eggs and Ham, and Seuss won the bet.

The Dick and Jane readers of 1930–1965 taught reading by which method?

Their predecessors, the McGuffey Readers, had been phonics-based.

About how many copies of the McGuffey Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960?

That put them in the same sales league as the Bible and Webster's Dictionary.

Michael Hart founded Project Gutenberg, the oldest digital library, in 1971 by typing in which text?

He did it on 4 July 1971 after being handed a free printed copy.

Todd Bol built the first Little Free Library in 2009 in Hudson, in which US state?

He shaped it like a one-room schoolhouse as a tribute to his mother, a teacher; more than 150,000 are now registered.

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library mails children a free book every month until what age?

It began in 1995 in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she grew up, and passed 100 million books delivered in 2018.

Reading Is Fundamental was founded in 1966 by Margaret McNamara, wife of which US official?

It is the oldest and largest children's literacy non-profit in the United States and has given away over 430 million books.

In which year did Amazon announce its acquisition of Goodreads?

The site had launched six years earlier and passed 150 million members in 2023.

Which library activist founded Banned Books Week in 1982?

The first one was organised in six weeks; it is held every autumn with the American Library Association.

Which magazine, founded by the Wallaces in 1922, was for decades the world's best-selling?

Its global circulation was about 10.5 million in the 2010s; it lost the US top spot to Better Homes and Gardens in 2009.

The world's largest book trade fair is held each October in which German city?

It was certainly running by 1462, when Gutenberg's former partners Fust and Schöffer moved their press there.

What does the Latin phrase ex libris on a bookplate mean?

The tradition began in Germany; a hand-coloured woodcut pasted into books given to Buxheim monastery around 1480 is one of the best known.

The oldest existing bookmark, a 6th-century Coptic leather strap, is held in which Dublin institution?

Machine-woven silk bookmarks became a Coventry speciality in the 1860s.

Which institution co-founded the Talking Books programme with the American Foundation for the Blind in 1931?

The first test recordings in 1932 included a chapter of Helen Keller's Midstream and Poe's The Raven.

Librarian Mary Titcomb pioneered the American 'book wagon' in 1905 in Washington County, in which state?

Britain had horse-drawn perambulating libraries decades earlier, including one at Warrington in 1858.

Bibliophilia is a love of books. What is the name for the compulsive obsession with collecting them?

Thomas Frognall Dibdin's 1809 book of that name popularised the word.

Writing was invented by the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia in roughly which period?

It grew from a clay token system used for counting, which became cuneiform on clay tablets.

The Dolch list of sight words for beginning readers was first published in which year?

Edward Fry's rival 1000 Instant Word list came out in 1979.

The English word 'book' is thought to derive from a Germanic root meaning which tree?

Old English bōc has cousins in Old Norse and Old Saxon, and Slavic words for 'letter' are cognate with 'beech' too.

Which 1952 company, founded by two college graduates, is called the 'seed' of the audiobook industry?

Its first release was Dylan Thomas reading his own poems, with A Child's Christmas in Wales added to the B-side as an afterthought.

In which decade did the term 'audiobook' come into use, as cassettes replaced records?

The earlier government term was 'talking book'; the Audio Publishers Association made 'audiobook' the industry standard in 1994.

What are the annual awards for audiobooks, first given by the Audio Publishers Association in 1996, called?

They are often described as the audiobook industry's equivalent of the Oscars.

Which president signed the 1800 act that founded the Library of Congress?

The act set aside $5,000 for books, and the first order from London brought 740 volumes and three maps.

On Christmas Eve 1851, a fire at the Library of Congress destroyed roughly how many books?

That was two-thirds of the collection; by 2008 librarians had tracked down replacements for all but about 300 of them.

The horse-drawn Warrington Perambulating Library, an early mobile library, was set up in which year?

It was run by the town's Mechanics' Institute to lend more of its books to enthusiastic local readers.