Guinness World Record awarded for highest library book fine paid

June 2 (UPI) -- Emily Canellos-Simms has received a Guinness World Record for the largest book fine ever paid at more than $345.

Cannellos-Simms paid the $345.14 fine even though she wasn't the one who actually borrowed the book.

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.