50 Fun Facts About Benjamin Franklin

In which city was Benjamin Franklin born in 1706?

He was born on Milk Street and baptised at the Old South Meeting House; Philadelphia only came later, when he ran away there.

What trade did Franklin's father Josiah practise?

Josiah had seventeen children by two wives; Benjamin was his fifteenth child and tenth and last son.

At 12, Franklin was apprenticed to his brother James in which trade?

James founded the New-England Courant, the town's third newspaper, and refused to print anything his little brother wrote.

Under what pen name did the teenage Franklin get letters published in his brother's newspaper?

He posed as a middle-aged widow and slipped 14 letters under the print-shop door at night; he was 16.

How old was Franklin when he ran away from his apprenticeship to Philadelphia?

Leaving without his brother's permission technically made him a fugitive.

Which Philadelphia newspaper did Franklin take over and publish from 1729, at age 23?

He bought Samuel Keimer's grandly named Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences and cut it down to the Gazette.

Under what pseudonym did Franklin write his famous almanack from 1732?

Everyone knew who the author was, but the Saunders character kept denying it; print runs reached 10,000 a year.

Poor Richard's Almanack was published every year from 1732 until which year?

Its 25-year run made Franklin rich; 'A penny saved is twopence dear' is the original of the misquoted 'penny earned'.

What was the Junto, which Franklin formed in Philadelphia in 1727 at age 21?

Also called the Leather Apron Club, its 12 founding members debated morals, politics and science, and it spun off a library.

Which institution, chartered by Franklin in 1731, grew out of the Junto's need for books?

It was a subscription library, and it still holds first editions of Moby-Dick and Leaves of Grass.

Franklin's Union Fire Company of 1736 was an early American example of what kind of body?

Fire insurance followed in 1752 with the Philadelphia Contributionship, which Franklin also helped found.

Which institution grew out of the Academy and College of Philadelphia that Franklin founded?

The academy opened in 1751 and graduated its first seven men in 1757.

Which learned body did Franklin found in 1743 'to help scientific men discuss their discoveries'?

He was its first secretary and became its president in 1769; it still meets in Philadelphia.

Which musical instrument, played by touching spinning bowls, did Franklin invent in 1761?

He named it from the Italian for harmony; Mozart wrote for it and Haydn owned one.

In what year did Franklin design his metal-lined 'Pennsylvania fireplace', now called the Franklin stove?

It was meant to burn less wood and make less smoke, drawing on the heat theories of Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave.

One story says Franklin invented bifocals so he could do what at the French court?

He is generally credited with the invention, though historians have found hints that others may have got there earlier.

Which Frenchman carried out Franklin's proposed lightning experiment first, on 10 May 1752?

Franklin's own kite flight, if it happened, was probably on 15 June that year; he did not wait to be struck by lightning.

In the kite experiment, what did Franklin tie to the kite string to draw sparks from a storm cloud?

Rain-wet twine conducted the charge to the key, which could then charge a Leyden jar.

Which pair of terms for electrical charge did Franklin introduce, replacing 'vitreous' and 'resinous'?

He also coined 'battery' and was first to state the conservation of charge.

Which Royal Society award did Franklin receive in 1753 for his work on electricity?

Three years later he became one of the few 18th-century Americans elected a Fellow of the Society.

Franklin once tried to kill a turkey with an electric shock for a dinner party and got what result?

Two Leyden jars left his arms numb for an evening; he called it 'so Notorious a Blunder'.

Which Atlantic ocean current did Franklin chart and name?

He got interested as deputy postmaster, wondering why mail ships were slower westbound; England ignored his 1770 chart.

Franklin's 1754 'Join, or Die' cartoon shows a snake cut into how many pieces?

Each segment carried the initials of a colony or region; folk belief held a cut snake could revive if rejoined before sunset.

Franklin's rejected 1754 plan for a unified colonial government is named after which New York town?

He drew partly on his observations of the Iroquois and their common council.

To which post did the Second Continental Congress appoint Franklin on 26 July 1775, the first to hold it?

He had been Philadelphia's postmaster since 1737 and deputy postmaster-general for the colonies since 1753.

Which British official ridiculed Franklin for an hour before the Privy Council in 1774 over the Hutchinson letters?

The humiliation in the 'Cockpit' ended Franklin's hopes of a peaceful settlement between Britain and the colonies.

Franklin sat on which body, appointed in June 1776, that drafted the Declaration of Independence?

Jefferson did the drafting; Franklin, then 70, made small edits and later signed as the oldest signer.

In which Paris suburb did Franklin live during his years as envoy to France?

The house was lent by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont; his 16-year-old grandson Temple came as secretary.

Franklin served on a 1784 French royal commission that discredited which fashionable healing craze?

Its blind trials showed the 'animal magnetism' cures worked only when patients expected them, an early demonstration of the placebo effect.

Franklin was the only person to sign all three of which founding documents?

He also signed the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France, which he had negotiated himself.

Along with Franklin, John Adams and John Jay, who was the fourth negotiator of the 1783 Treaty of Paris?

The treaty was signed at the Hôtel d'York on 3 September 1783; Laurens had earlier been held in the Tower of London.

Franklin's son William broke with his father over the Revolution. What office had William held?

A Loyalist, William was deposed in 1776 and placed under house arrest, later leaving for England with the British.

Which woman became Franklin's common-law wife in 1730 after her first husband vanished?

He had proposed to her at 17; her mother married her off to John Rogers, who fled and was never traced.

How many virtues did Franklin list in the self-improvement plan he devised at age 20?

He worked on one virtue a week, from Temperance to Humility, and admitted he often fell short.

Which cause did Franklin take up late in life, becoming president of Pennsylvania's society for it?

He had owned at least seven slaves and run 'for sale' ads in his paper before freeing his two remaining slaves after France.

Roughly how many people attended Franklin's funeral in Philadelphia in 1790?

He was buried at Christ Church Burial Ground, where visitors still toss pennies onto his grave.

Franklin's portrait has appeared on which US banknote since 1914?

'Benjamins' carry a Joseph Duplessis portrait; the reverse has shown Independence Hall since 1928.

The myth that Franklin wanted the turkey as America's national bird comes from a 1784 letter to whom?

He was really grumbling that the eagle on a Cincinnati Society crest looked like a turkey, and mused that the turkey was 'more respectable'.

What did Franklin's 1784 satirical letter, often miscredited as inventing daylight saving, actually propose?

Precise schedules barely existed in 18th-century Europe; the clock-shifting idea came from others more than a century later.

Franklin's mock essay 'Fart Proudly' replied to a call for papers from which body?

It proposed research into making flatulence smell better, and shows what his biographers call his bawdy side.

In 1999 Franklin entered a hall of fame for which game, partly for his 1786 essay on its morals?

Told by a French duchess that 'we do not take kings so', he replied: 'We do in America.'

Which Philadelphia institution, the first of its kind in the colonies, did Franklin help found in 1751?

He co-founded it with Dr Thomas Bond in 1751, funded by an Assembly bill that matched public donations, a manoeuvre he was especially proud of.

Which grandson accompanied Franklin to France as his 16-year-old secretary?

Temple was the illegitimate son of Franklin's own illegitimate son William, and both were born on 22 February.

Which evangelical preacher did Franklin admire and publish for profit, without sharing his theology?

Printing all of Whitefield's sermons and journals earned Franklin a great deal of money and helped spread the Great Awakening.

Why did Franklin never take out a patent on anything he devised?

In his autobiography he wrote that since we enjoy the inventions of others, we should serve others with ours 'freely and generously'.

How many children did Franklin's father Josiah have in total, across two marriages?

Benjamin was the eighth child of Josiah's second wife Abiah Folger, his fifteenth child overall and his tenth and last son.

Where in London did Franklin lodge during his missions between 1757 and 1775?

He grew close to his landlady Margaret Stevenson and her daughter Polly; the house just off the Strand is now the Benjamin Franklin House museum.

What did Franklin famously carry in the hollow joint of his cane to 'calm the waters'?

After noticing a ship's wake flatten when cooks dumped greasy water, he tested a teaspoon of oil on a pond at Clapham Common and calmed several square yards instantly.

How long were the £1,000 trusts Franklin left to Boston and Philadelphia meant to gather interest?

The idea came from a French parody of Poor Richard's Almanack; by 1990 the Boston fund held almost $5 million and Philadelphia's over $2 million.

In 1734, Franklin published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of whose Constitutions?

Initiated around 1730, Franklin was already grand master by 1734 and remained a Freemason all his life, later leading a Paris lodge.