The Library of Congress was established
On this day · 24 April 1800
A modest $5,000 book budget, tucked into a bill about moving the capital, seeded the largest library on Earth.
On April 24, 1800, President John Adams signed an act of Congress that created the Library of Congress. The library was almost an afterthought: its founding clause was folded into legislation transferring the seat of government from Philadelphia to the new capital at Washington.
The act set aside just $5,000 for “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress” and a room to keep them. The first order — roughly 740 books and three maps, shipped from London — was housed in the Capitol.
Much of that original collection burned when British troops torched the Capitol in 1814.
To rebuild, Congress bought Thomas Jefferson’s personal library of 6,487 volumes. From those slim beginnings grew the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States and, today, the largest library in the world, measured in tens of millions of items.
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