Cannellos-Simms paid the $345.14 fine even though she wasn't the one who actually borrowed the book.
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She found the book, Days and Deeds, a book of children's poems in her mother's house that was due back at the Kewanee Public Library in Illinois on April 19, 1955.
The fine had accumulated at two cents a day when she paid it 47 years later.
Though the fine was the largest ever paid, some books have taken longer to return to the library.
George Washington borrowed a book, The Law of Nations, from the New York Library after becoming president and didn't return it. The Mount Vernon estate returned it 221 years later.
