Harvard library donated by man who died on the Titanic has 92 kilometres of bookshelves

Harvard University is at the centre of a storm linked to Donald Trump. After the centuries-old school refused to implement the policies demanded by the US president, his administration froze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and threatened to remove the school’s tax-exempt status.

As the battle between the two bodies rages on, you might be interested in knowing some little-known facts about Harvard. The university, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was established in 1636 and is the oldest educational institution in the country.

Do you know Harvard has a strange link to the Titanic, the iconic ship that sank on its maiden voyage?

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Harvard is built on 5,457 acres of land, which is the same as 4,000 football fields. It also has the most famous university libraries, and their collection is the oldest in the country. There are 79 libraries at Harvard, with the Widener Memorial Library being the largest and most famous.

You can find over 3.5 million works in over 100 languages at the Widener Library. The bookshelves run a whopping 92 kilometres across ten levels. The collection is so huge that there are 10 levels in the building. Four of them were built underground afterwards since there was nowhere else it could expand.

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This library is named after a man who died in the Titanic tragedy. The collection at Widener belongs to Harry Widener, who was on the ill-fated boat that went down in the Atlantic in 1912. The British luxury passenger liner was en route to New York City from Southampton, England, after setting sail on April 10. Nearly 1,500 people died in the sinking after the ship hit an iceberg on April 14.

Widener died in the Titanic tragedy

Widener was on the ship and among those who lost their lives. He studied at Harvard and graduated in 1907. He loved books and was a bibliophile. Widener was a member of the Grolier Club, a private club and society of bibliophiles in New York City.

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He had a large collection of books, one that book collector and dealer George Sidney Hellman said would have "eventually become one of the greatest collec­tions of books in modern times."

Widener was on the Titanic with his parents. His mother and her maid survived the sinking, while his father, his valet and Widener died. In 1915, his mother donated the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library to Harvard.

The library has 10 levels, and four of them were built underground since there was no other way to expand it. One of the students once joked that they would require a compass to navigate it.