So in honor of Dewey Decimal Day, here's a look at some of the world's most incredible libraries.
Let's go on a journey together.
A thread 🧵
This is the Bibliothèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France.
The entrance is guarded by three giant-sized French classics.
The early plans for the Abbey Library of St. Gall in St. Gallen, Switzerland date back to 820 CE.
It has nearly 160,000 volumes available for public use.
This is the Starfield Library in Seoul, South Korea.
It sits inside the world's largest underground shopping mall.
The Klementinum National Library in Prague, Czech Republic is known as the "Baroque pearl of Prague."
It now serves as the National Library of the Czech Republic, housing over 20,00 volumes of foreign theological literature.
This is the entrance to the Rampur Raza Library in Rampur, India.
It's housed in the former mansion of Nawab Hamid Ali Khan.
This is The Morgan Library & Museum in New York.
It carries the private collection of J. P. Morgan, and drawings from renowned artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Pablo Picasso.
It also has two secret stairways hidden behind the shelves.
The Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt is a commemoration of the ancient Library of Alexandria.
The walls are etched with 120 difference scripts as a tribute to the evolution of human language.
The idea for The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library first came in 1895.
It contains an estimated 15 million manuscripts, from medieval manuscripts and ancient Japanese scrolls to contemporary novels and comic books.
This is the Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
It's regarded as one of the most beautiful libraries in the world, and houses the biggest and most valuable collection of Portuguese literature outside of Portugal.
This is the Admont Abbey Library in Admont, Austria.
It was developed in 1776, and the ceiling artwork depicts the different phases of human knowledge.
The Stuttgart City Library in Stuttgart, Germany takes design inspiration from the Pantheon in Rome.
With every single piece of the interior in white, the only color in the library comes from the covers of the books.
The Tianjin Binhai New Area Library in Tianjin, China is one of the five central attractions of the Binhai Cultural Center.
It's nicknamed "The Eye" because of the giant sphere in the center.
Created in 1876, the Library of Parliament in Ottawa, Canada is the main research center for the Government of Canada.
It is tended to by 300 curators.
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On this day, a tiny town in Canada opened up its hearts — and its homes — to 7,000 stranded passengers in a desperate time of need.
They didn’t care about politics, or who the President was. They did it because it's what Canadians do best.
A Goodable 🧵
On the east coast of North America, there's a Canadian province called Newfoundland. It’s filled with cold winters, warm summers, and even warmer hearts.
The province has a small town called Gander. In the 1940s, its airport used to be one of the biggest in the world.
On September 11, 2001, it started out as a normal day.
People dropped off their kids, went to work, chatted with friends. The kind of things that happen everyday in small towns across Canada.
During the US Civil War, he taught himself to read, stole a confederate ship, sailed to freedom, rescued other slaves, bought his former master’s house, then got elected to Congress.
Yet most people have never heard of him.
A 🧵
Smalls was born on a plantation in South Carolina and grew up working on the docks.
When the war erupted, the confederate army forced him to work on a steamship transporting confederate troops and weapons.
But Smalls had other plans.
One night, he asked the captain if he could bring his family to show them the ship.
After the soldiers left, he brought his family on board, hid them, and sailed the ship into confederate patrolled waters.