FUN BOOK FACTS
A book that purifies water, The Drinkable Book, is printed on filter paper capable of killing deadly waterborne bacteria.
The book was created by non-profit organization, WATERisLIFE, to raise awareness on proper sanitation and hygiene. Each page is coated with silver nanoparticles that instantly kill waterborne bacteria that cause diseases such as cholera, typhoid, and E. coli.
But apart from being a cleaning filter, the book teaches the importance of proper sanitation and hygiene.
Teeny Ted from Turnip Town (2007), is certified by Guinness World Records as the world's smallest reproduction of a printed book.
The book was produced in the Nano Imaging Laboratory at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with the assistance of SFU scientists Li Yang and Karen Kavanagh.
The book's size is 0.07 mm x 0.10 mm. The letters are carved into 30 microtablets on a polished piece of single crystalline silicon, using a focused-gallium-ion beam with a minimum diameter of 7 nanometers (this was compared to the head of a pin at 2 mm, 2,000,000 nm, across). The book has its own ISBN, 978-1-894897-17-4.
The story was written by Malcolm Douglas Chaplin and is "a fable about Teeny Ted’s victory in the turnip contest at the annual county fair."
The book has been published in a limited edition of 100 copies by the laboratory and requires a scanning electron microscope to read the text.
In December 2012, a Library Edition of the book was published with a full title of Teeny Ted from Turnip Town & the Tale of Scale: A Scientific Book of Word Puzzles and an ISBN number 978-1-894897-36-5. On the title page it is referred to as the "Large Print Edition of the World's Smallest Book".
(Source: wikipedia)
Do you know the monster's name in Frankenstein?
No... it is not Frankenstein, even though many people mistakenly think it is. He is never actually given a name in the book, although he does almost name himself, when speaking to his creator, Victor Frankenstein.
The creature states, 'I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy'. The creature thinks he is like Adam because he is the innocent who got rejected by his creator and feels lonesome without his Eve.
Get it: Frankenstein
Librarians were once taught a special rounded style of handwriting to ensure uniformity and legibility in catalogs.
The handwriting style, called the “library hand,” was developed by Thomas Alva Edison in 1885. Based on Edison’s own handwriting, the style was especially perfected to allow librarians to “take legibly from the wire, longhand, forty-seven and even fifty-four words a minute."
John Steinbeck’s dog, Toby, ate the first draft of Of Mice and Men.
Every teacher has rolled their eyes at the “my dog ate my homework” excuse, but it really happened to one of America’s most revered authors.
In 1936, John Steinbeck’s dog Toby, an Irish setter, turned the first draft of Of Mice and Men into a snack. In a letter dated May 27 of that year, the future Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winner wrote that he “was pretty mad, but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically.”
Get it: Of Mice and Men
The world’s fastest speed-reader record belongs to Howard Stephen Berg, popularly referred to as Speedy Berg.
He read over 25,000 words per minute in 1990 and set the world record at 80 pages per minute.
While the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records does list him as the record holder then, they no longer seem to recognize any speed reading records.
This may be because the exact word amount they read is hard to prove.
Some critics believe speed reading records can be broken by just pre-reading or memorizing the text.
While his records may not be written in stone, Mr. Berg’s abilities to read and learn fast are widely recognized.
Jane Austen wrote Persuasion and Northanger Abbey in Bath, England, which also happens to be where you can attend the annual Jane Austin Festival.
The event celebrated its sixteenth anniversary this past September, and included country dances, calligraphy workshops, dramatic readings, and a whole lot of bonnets.
You can also visit the Jane Austen Centre year-round, a small museum with costumed tours and afternoon tea services.
Every miniature book is a piece of art, but a miniature book that is circular, is a masterpiece.
This exceptional book, Codex Rotundus, was crafted around 1480. It was a book of hours, a Christian devotional book popular in medieval ages, written in Latin in French.
Despite being only 9 cm in diameter, it consists of 266 pages. The book spine measures only 3 cm, so the book must be held together by 3 clasps. The clasps are monograms shaped in the form of different Gothic alphabetic letters.
The creator of Codex Rotundus, an anonymous book painter from Bruges, Belgium, not only beautifully designed the text inside the round pages but also painted 30 exceptional initials.
The world´s largest fine for an overdue library book is $345.14!
The world´s largest fine for an overdue library book is $345.14 (£203.29)! It is the amount owed at two cents a day for the poetry book, Days and Deeds. It was checked out of Kewanee Public Library, Illinois, USA in April 1955 by Emily Canellos-Simms.
Although the book was due back on the 19th of April, 1955, Emily found it in her mother´s house 47 years later and presented the library with a check for the overdue fines.
Get it: Days and Deeds...
Harper Lee once got a year’s wages as a gift from her friends.
As a struggling young writer, Harper Lee once got a year’s wages as a gift from her friends so that she could quit her job and devote more time to writing. She wrote To Kill a Mockingbird.
The book became an immediate success, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. Harper Lee, however, did not to publish another book until her death bed 55 years later.
Get it: To Kill a Mockingbird
Reading for just 6 minutes each day can help reduce stress by up to 68%, study finds.
A study at the University of Sussex found that reading can reduce stress by up two thirds – making it a much more efficient relaxation method than listening to music, drinking a hot cup of tea, or even taking a walk. Reading for just 6 minutes each day can help reduce stress by up to 68%!
Participants who engaged in just six minutes of reading for pleasure were also found to have a significantly slower heart rate and reduced muscle tension.
Another study, led by researchers from Yale University School of Public Health, revealed that adults who reported reading books for more than 3 ½ hours per week were 23 percent less likely to die over 12 years of follow-up, compared with those who did not read books.
Portuguese Library Biblioteca Joanina is home to a swarm of bats that feed on book-eating insects every night.
Biblioteca Joanina has a rather unlikely cleaning crew – in this grand old Portuguese library, bats act as pest control. Swarms of bats hide behind the rococo bookcases during the day, while at night they feast on book-damaging insects, helping preserve the over 300-year-old building and its rich cultural heritage.
