40 Fun Facts About The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

What did a hungry 17-year-old Benjamin Franklin carry under each arm on his first walk up Market Street?

A puffy bread roll under each arm, and a third in his mouth, was what three pennies bought him. Once full, he gave the two spare rolls to a woman and her child who had shared his boat.

What did Benjamin Franklin advise a militia chaplain to hand out just after prayers so the soldiers would attend?

Rum was already owed to the men, a gill a day, so Franklin suggested the chaplain serve it himself. Never, he writes, were prayers more generally and more punctually attended.

Which fish, fried on a boat becalmed off Block Island, tempted young Benjamin Franklin to give up his vegetable diet?

Cod smelt too good to resist, and Franklin recalled that the big fish had smaller fish in their stomachs. If they ate one another, he reasoned, he saw no reason why he should not eat them.

What did young Benjamin Franklin push through Philadelphia's streets himself to show he was not above his business?

A wheelbarrow loaded with the paper he had just bought was Franklin's advertisement. He writes that he took care not only to be industrious and frugal in reality, but to avoid looking otherwise.

To win over a hostile member of the Pennsylvania Assembly, Benjamin Franklin asked the man to lend him what?

A rare book, borrowed and returned within a week with a grateful note, turned the opponent into a friend for life. Franklin's maxim: someone who has done you one kindness will readily do you another.

Which dish did printer Samuel Keimer send for, and finish before his guests came, to end a meatless pact with Franklin?

A roast pig ended three months of meatless living that Franklin had talked his employer into. Keimer had invited Franklin and two women friends to dine, but ate the whole before they came.

What did Benjamin Franklin do when Governor Thomas offered him a patent on the Pennsylvania fireplace he had invented?

Declined it: Franklin held that, since we enjoy the inventions of others, we should share our own freely. A London ironmonger then patented a copy and, Franklin was told, made a little fortune.

Benjamin Franklin and a friend learned Italian by letting the winner of which game set the loser grammar tasks?

Chess was eating into his study time, so Franklin refused to play unless the victor could impose a task in grammar or translation. Evenly matched, the two beat each other into the language.

The first part of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography takes the form of a 1771 letter addressed to which relative?

His son is the reader greeted in the opening line. Franklin did not mean this part for print: he was setting down family anecdotes during a week of leisure in the English countryside.

In Franklin's Autobiography, a man worn out from turning the grindstone decides he likes which imperfect tool best?

A speckled axe would do once the buyer learned how much grinding a mirror-bright one would cost him. Franklin tells it against himself, having been almost ready to settle for a faulty character.

At ten, Benjamin Franklin was taken from school to help in his father's Boston shop, making which goods?

Candles and soap were a trade Josiah Franklin took up only after emigrating, because dyeing would not feed his family. Benjamin cut wicks, filled moulds, ran errands and disliked all of it.

Which calling did young Benjamin Franklin long for, alarming a father who had already seen one child run off to it?

Sailor was the life the boy wanted, living near the harbour and good with boats. His brother Josiah had already gone that way, so their father walked him round the workshops of Boston to find a trade ashore.

Josiah Franklin sent eight-year-old Benjamin to grammar school, meaning to devote him to which profession?

The clergy was to receive Benjamin as his father's tithe to the Church. The plan died when Josiah weighed the cost of college against the poor living many graduates went on to make.

Which book so pleased the boy Benjamin Franklin that his first savings went on its author's collected works?

Pilgrim's Progress led him to buy John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. He later sold the set to pay for forty or fifty cheap chapbooks of history.

Benjamin Franklin's brother had the boy write and sell a street ballad about the taking of which pirate?

Blackbeard, whom Franklin also calls Teach, was the villain of the second of his two ballads. He later judged his ballads wretched stuff, and his father warned him that verse-makers were generally beggars.

Benjamin Franklin taught himself prose style by rebuilding essays from short notes out of which London periodical?

The Spectator, Addison and Steele's London essay journal, reached him as one odd volume. He jotted hints of each sentence, set them aside for days, rebuilt the essay in his own words, then compared.

After reading Xenophon, young Benjamin Franklin dropped blunt contradiction to argue in the manner of which philosopher?

Socrates became his model: Franklin put on the manner of a humble inquirer and doubter. He found it safest for himself and very embarrassing to the people he used it against.

Which Boston newspaper, started by Benjamin Franklin's brother, unknowingly printed the teenager's anonymous essays?

The New England Courant ran the pieces after Franklin disguised his handwriting and slid them under the printing-house door at night. He then listened as the regulars guessed at some learned author.

Where did the worn-out runaway Benjamin Franklin fall fast asleep on his first morning in Philadelphia?

A Quaker meeting, silent that morning, let him doze until it broke up and someone kindly roused him. The meeting-house was, he notes, the first house he was in, or slept in, in the city.

Who stood at her father's door on Market Street and thought the newly arrived Benjamin Franklin looked ridiculous?

His future wife, Miss Read, was the onlooker, and Franklin was soon lodging in her father's house. They married in 1730, after his London years and her unhappy match with a potter named Rogers.

Which Pennsylvania governor sent the teenage Benjamin Franklin to London on promised letters of credit that never came?

Sir William Keith wished to please everybody and, Franklin writes, having little to give, he gave expectations. In London a friend told Franklin that nobody who knew the governor depended on him.

London pressmen gave the young Benjamin Franklin which nickname because he would not join them in drinking beer?

The Water-American carried a heavy form of type in each hand while the beer-drinkers managed one with both. Franklin talked many of them into trading their breakfast pint for hot gruel.

Which skill did Benjamin Franklin show off between Chelsea and Blackfriars, and nearly stay in London to teach?

Swimming, with feats on and under the surface, won him an offer to coach a great man's boys. Franklin reckoned that a school for it in London might have earned him a good deal of money.

Which would-be poet sailed to London with Benjamin Franklin in 1724 and left owing him about twenty-seven pounds?

James Ralph left his family behind in Philadelphia and lived on Franklin's London wages. Franklin wrote that he loved him notwithstanding, for his many amiable qualities.

What did Benjamin Franklin call the Friday-evening club for mutual improvement he formed among his Philadelphia friends?

The Junto had each member bring queries on politics or natural philosophy, and read an essay of his own every three months. The name is a Spanish term for a group combined in intrigue.

Which newspaper did Benjamin Franklin take over for a trifle from his failing rival Samuel Keimer?

The Pennsylvania Gazette had at most ninety subscribers when Keimer gave up on it after nine months. In Franklin's hands it proved, within a few years, extremely profitable.

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography borrows which printer's term for the mistakes of his life he would like to correct?

Errata is his word for wrongs such as neglecting Miss Read while he was in London. He says he would gladly live his life again if, like an author, he could fix the faults in a second edition.

What does Benjamin Franklin call his first project of a public nature, begun in Philadelphia with fifty paying members?

A subscription library let fifty members pool forty shillings each for volumes none could afford alone. Franklin calls it the mother of all the North American subscription libraries.

Benjamin Franklin's anonymous 1729 pamphlet urged Pennsylvania to issue more of what, which he was then hired to print?

Paper money was opposed by the rich, who had no writer able to answer him, so the measure carried. Friends in the House rewarded Franklin with the printing, a very profitable job.

What luxury did Mrs. Franklin slip onto her husband Benjamin's breakfast table, at a cost of twenty-three shillings?

A china bowl and silver spoon replaced his twopenny earthen porringer and pewter spoon. Her only excuse was that her husband deserved them as much as any of his neighbours.

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography describes his bold and arduous project of arriving at what?

Moral perfection meant living without committing any fault at any time. He soon found that while he guarded against one fault he was often surprised by another, so he built a system of daily records.

Which virtue did Benjamin Franklin add last to his list, after a friend pointed out a fault in his conversation?

Humility went on the list once the friend said Franklin was generally thought proud and overbearing in argument. He jokes that if he ever did conquer pride, he would probably be proud of his humility.

Which of his thirteen virtues does Benjamin Franklin admit gave him the most trouble, even after years of practice?

Order, a set place for every thing and a set time for every task, defeated him. Blessed with a good memory, he had never felt the lack of method, and a busy master printer could not keep fixed hours.

Under which pen name did Benjamin Franklin begin publishing his yearly almanac in 1732?

Richard Saunders was the Poor Richard of the title, and the almanac sold nearly ten thousand copies a year. Franklin filled the gaps in its calendar with proverbs on industry and frugality.

Which travelling preacher's sermon moved Benjamin Franklin to empty his pocket, gold and all, into the collection dish?

George Whitefield wanted funds for an orphan house in Georgia; Franklin, who thought it should be built in Philadelphia, had resolved to give nothing. He softened by stages: first the coppers, then the dollars, then everything.

Which British commander brushed aside Benjamin Franklin's warning about Indian ambushes on the march to Fort Duquesne?

General Braddock smiled and said such fighters could make no impression on the king's regular troops. Franklin, who had hired the army's wagons, thought him brave but far too sure of himself.

The first edition of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, published in 1791, appeared in which language?

French readers got the book first, in a clumsy and unfinished translation printed at Paris. Where the translator found a manuscript is unknown, and that faulty text was then reprinted in Germany and Britain.

Books written to refute which religious outlook instead converted the teenage Benjamin Franklin to it?

Deism won him because the arguments quoted for refutation seemed stronger than the refutations. Watching how fellow free-thinkers behaved, he later suspected the doctrine might be true but was not very useful.

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography says he stood before five kings and sat down to dinner with the king of which country?

Denmark's king shared a table with him, capping a proverb of Solomon his father often quoted: a man diligent in his calling shall stand before kings. Franklin never expected it to come literally true.

At whose country house at Twyford in Hampshire did Benjamin Franklin begin writing his Autobiography in 1771?

Bishop Shipley was the friend whose home gave Franklin a week of uninterrupted leisure. He carried the story up to 1731 there, then did not take it up again until 1784.