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Former Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang, is said to have burned all of the historical and philosophical texts in his kingdom, as well as burying 460 Confucian scholars alive.
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Queen Elizabeth I required a part of a play by Shakespeare to be removed.
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Thomas Mortan’s book, “New English Canaan” was banned by the Puritans because it was harshly critical of their actions that has resulted in the genocide of the Indigenous population.
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Thomas Bowdler wrote and published a “family friendly” reworking of Shakespeare’s works.
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The General at the time, Ho Chien, banned Alice in Wonderland because he believed it would be disastrous for animals to use human language.
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In 1933 university students burned tens of thousands of books that didn’t align with the Nazi ideology, this campaign was called the “Action Against the Un-German Spirit”. By the end of the Holocaust, an estimated amount of over 100 million books were burned.
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In Drake, North Dakota, a high school English teacher taught Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut to his class. The head of the school board had the copies of the book burned in the school incinerator.
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Banned Book Week begins. It was started because of banned books becoming much more common in the recent years. Banned Book Week fights against the censorship of books, brings together the book community, and brings awareness to banned books.
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London schools ban “The Tale of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny”. The reason for this is that the book only showed middle-class rabbits with too much privilege.
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The Harry Potter series becomes the most challenged books in U.S. libraries due to complaints made about the books’ use of witchcraft and magic, they were called satanic.