MORE than 400 participants made local history by completing Singapore's longest reading marathon on Thursday.

The Reading Marathon, part of the National Library Board's READ! Singapore 2009, officially set a record for the 'Longest Reading Aloud Marathon by Multiple Readers' in the Singapore Book of Records.

The participants took turns to read fiction novels and short stories aloud, over a continuous duration of 144 hours from 1pm on July 3 to 1pm on July 9.

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