Today Is..First Harry Potter Book Published

With the exception of JK Rowling's bank balance, the series of Harry Potter books were great for British actors because anyone who was anyone in the British Actors' Equity Association turned up in the films which followed including the British acting Royalty big hitters such as Richard Harris,   Michael Gambon, Robbie Coltrane, Maggie Smith, John Hurt, Ralph Fiennes, Julie Walters, Kenneth Branagh, Gary Oldman, Timothy Spall, Emma Thompson David Tennant, Jim Broadbent as well as the brilliant Alan Rickman and Johnny Rotten's short lived replacement in the Sex Pistols, Edward Tudor-Pole.
The series of seven novels sold more than 600 million copies worldwide, making them the best-selling book series in history, and have been available in 85 languages. The last four books consecutively set records as the fastest-selling books in history, with the final installment selling roughly 2.7 million copies in the United Kingdom and 8.3 million copies in the United States within twenty-four hours of it's release.
As usual, the nutty Religious folk found they had a problem with it, claiming the books promoted witchcraft and Wicca and are therefore unsuitable for children as it was anti-family, discussed magic and witchcraft, contained actual spells and curses and referenced the occult/Satanism. Maybe Rowling should have Harry zap a few homosexuals, i'm sure they would have been fine with that.
J.K. Rowling gave her dad a Harry Potter first edition from the initial first printing of 50,000 copies, and he promptly sold it which was highly irresponsible of him, both from both a parental angle and a financial one, as her books rose in value a lot in the years that followed, prices for first edition first printings go up to around £6,500.
Each Harry Potter book broke sales records set by the previous book with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, book 7 in the series, had an initial print run of 12 million copies and sold 8.3 million copies in the first 24 hours.
Between 1998 and when the series finished in 2007 one favourite pastime of Potterheads was to work out which House they would be in with the options being Gryffindor (values courage, bravery, nerve and chivalry) Hufflepuff (values hard work, patience, justice and loyalty), Ravenclaw (values intelligence, learning, wisdom and wit) or Slytherin (values ambition, cunning, leadership and resourcefulness).
I have not read any of the books and only saw most of the first film (i did duck out for a smoke part way through) have always advocated that anything that gets children into reading is a good thing but doctors coined the term 'Hogwarts headache' which is a tension headache accompanied by neck or wrist pains caused by unhealthily long reading sessions of Harry Potter but researchers at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford found that the admission rate of children with traumatic injuries plummeted on the publication weekends of the Harry Potter books so a bit of a headache compared to surgery to reset your broken leg is a small price to pay i'd say.