John Hanson walked into the Concord Public Library in New Hampshire with a September 1894 issue of The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine . The 84-year-old Barrington resident had kept the magazine for decades, and when he returned it in September 2026, the item was 48,220 days overdue. That would have amounted to a $12,055 penalty under the library’s previous fine system, but he did not have to pay it because the library had begun a year-long freeze on overdue fines.
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