You've probably heard of a little book called Fahrenheit 451. What you may or may not have heard is the rumor that Ray Bradbury actually had a book burned to get the temperature for this title. This would have been an extremely epic move on his part, but there are suspicions that this temperature is not quite accurate.
First, a clarifying fact is that he meant this to be the temperature at which paper combusts. This in itself is a hard statistic to track since it is dependent on multiple factors, including how thick and old the paper is. Many experiments have been performed, but the varying procedures and results mean there is no exact measurement for when paper combusts.
These results have been reported to be from the 440s-480s. With such a large range, it is completely possible that when Bradbury phoned a fire station to pose his question, they really did answer him with 451 degrees Fahrenheit, but we may never know if the conditions for this experiment were reliable.
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