Imagine the Founding Fathers, some of the wisest men in American history, scrounging around individual private libraries for books. This was the case in the early decades after the U.S. won its independence — no common library existed for the lawmakers to reference when they needed to research a topic. When the capital moved from Philadelphia to Washington D.C., a law was passed by Congress that called for a library to be placed in “a suitable apartment” in the new city, but did not specify where that suitable apartment might be.

On this day, January 26, in 1802, President Thomas Jefferson signed into law the act that established the Library of Congress. From the original collection of 740 volumes purchased from London, and through two disastrous fires, it grew by leaps and bounds under Jefferson’s guidance.

The library almost literally had to start from scratch after 1814, when the British invaded Washington, burning down both the capitol building and the Library of Congress. To re-establish it, Jefferson agreed to sell his own collection – some 6,000 books in several languages encompassing an enormous range of subjects – to the library. Another fire in 1851 destroyed a significant portion of the library’s collection, including most of Jefferson’s books. But through it all the library persevered and expanded under the steady hand of its administrators, the Librarians of Congress.