John Hanson is 84 years old and never knew how that magazine ended up in his house.
It was a September 1894 issue of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, with a marbled hardcover and more than 200 pages of essays, poems, and illustrations from another era. It bore the stamp of the Concord Public Library, in New Hampshire, and an inscription warning that it could only be kept for one week. It remained out for 48.220 days, almost 132 years.
At 25 cents per day overdue, the fine would have exceeded 12.000 dollars. But the library had just announced that it would waive all late fees for a year, and Hanson decided to return it before the deadline. Archivist Jennifer Needham received it carefully: because of its age, it will not circulate again. It will remain in storage, a silent witness to a loan that no one remembers requesting.
