It's not sailing. But it's still pretty great.

On this day (May 23) in 1911, the New York Public Library was dedicated. The ceremony was presided over by President William Howard Taft. The next morning, the library officially opened its doors and between 30,000 and 50,000 people visited the building that day. One of the first books requested was N. I. Grot's "Ethical Ideas of Our Time," a study of Friedrich Nietzsche and Leo Tolstoy. The reader filed his call slip at 9:08 a.m. and received his book six minutes later.

Today, the New York Public Library is the only library which features world-acclaimed research centers and a large network of neighborhood branch libraries, all of which may be used by the for free by the public. It is is visited and used annually by more than 15 million people. There are 1.86 million cardholders and its collections expand at the rate of 10,000 items per week.

Photo: The Reading room, by Jessica Spengler, courtesy of Flickr (with this license).