50 free Benjamin Franklin trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
44 free Benjamin Franklin trivia questions with answers. Forty-four questions on Benjamin Franklin, the Boston candlemaker's son who ran away to Philadelphia at 17 and became a printer, scientist, inventor, postmaster, diplomat and Founding Father. The set covers his early pen names and Poor Richard's Almanack, the civic institutions he started, from a subscription library to a fire company, his electrical experiments and the famous kite, and inventions like the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove and the glass armonica. It also follows him into politics: the Join, or Die cartoon, the Albany Plan, his humiliation before the Privy Council, the years in France, the treaties he signed and his late turn to abolition. Some questions bust popular myths, such as whether he really wanted the turkey as national bird or invented daylight saving time. Easier questions suit a classroom or family quiz; the later ones on his son William, his 13 virtues and his flatulence essay will stretch history buffs. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and shows the sentence that proves it under the explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Benjamin Franklin born in 1706?
Boston
He was born on Milk Street and baptised at the Old South Meeting House; Philadelphia only came later, when he ran away there.
Q 02What trade did Franklin's father Josiah practise?
Candle and soap maker
Josiah had seventeen children by two wives; Benjamin was his fifteenth child and tenth and last son.
Q 03At 12, Franklin was apprenticed to his brother James in which trade?
Printing
James founded the New-England Courant, the town's third newspaper, and refused to print anything his little brother wrote.
Q 04Under what pen name did the teenage Franklin get letters published in his brother's newspaper?
Silence Dogood
He posed as a middle-aged widow and slipped 14 letters under the print-shop door at night; he was 16.
Q 05How old was Franklin when he ran away from his apprenticeship to Philadelphia?
17
Leaving without his brother's permission technically made him a fugitive.
Q 06Which Philadelphia newspaper did Franklin take over and publish from 1729, at age 23?
The Pennsylvania Gazette
He bought Samuel Keimer's grandly named Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences and cut it down to the Gazette.
Q 07Under what pseudonym did Franklin write his famous almanack from 1732?
Richard Saunders
Everyone knew who the author was, but the Saunders character kept denying it; print runs reached 10,000 a year.
Q 08Poor Richard's Almanack was published every year from 1732 until which year?
1758
Its 25-year run made Franklin rich; 'A penny saved is twopence dear' is the original of the misquoted 'penny earned'.
Q 09What was the Junto, which Franklin formed in Philadelphia in 1727 at age 21?
A mutual-improvement club
Also called the Leather Apron Club, its 12 founding members debated morals, politics and science, and it spun off a library.
Q 10Which institution, chartered by Franklin in 1731, grew out of the Junto's need for books?
Library Company of Philadelphia
It was a subscription library, and it still holds first editions of Moby-Dick and Leaves of Grass.
Q 11Franklin's Union Fire Company of 1736 was an early American example of what kind of body?
Volunteer brigade
Fire insurance followed in 1752 with the Philadelphia Contributionship, which Franklin also helped found.
Q 12Which institution grew out of the Academy and College of Philadelphia that Franklin founded?
University of Pennsylvania
The academy opened in 1751 and graduated its first seven men in 1757.
Q 13Which learned body did Franklin found in 1743 'to help scientific men discuss their discoveries'?
American Philosophical Society
Q 21Franklin once tried to kill a turkey with an electric shock for a dinner party and got what result?
He shocked himself instead
Two Leyden jars left his arms numb for an evening; he called it 'so Notorious a Blunder'.
Q 22Which Atlantic ocean current did Franklin chart and name?
Gulf Stream
He got interested as deputy postmaster, wondering why mail ships were slower westbound; England ignored his 1770 chart.
Q 23Franklin's 1754 'Join, or Die' cartoon shows a snake cut into how many pieces?
Eight
Each segment carried the initials of a colony or region; folk belief held a cut snake could revive if rejoined before sunset.
He was its first secretary and became its president in 1769; it still meets in Philadelphia.
Q 14Which musical instrument, played by touching spinning bowls, did Franklin invent in 1761?
Glass armonica
He named it from the Italian for harmony; Mozart wrote for it and Haydn owned one.
Q 15In what year did Franklin design his metal-lined 'Pennsylvania fireplace', now called the Franklin stove?
1742
It was meant to burn less wood and make less smoke, drawing on the heat theories of Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave.
Q 16One story says Franklin invented bifocals so he could do what at the French court?
Read lips while following speakers
He is generally credited with the invention, though historians have found hints that others may have got there earlier.
Q 17Which Frenchman carried out Franklin's proposed lightning experiment first, on 10 May 1752?
Thomas-François Dalibard
Franklin's own kite flight, if it happened, was probably on 15 June that year; he did not wait to be struck by lightning.
Q 18In the kite experiment, what did Franklin tie to the kite string to draw sparks from a storm cloud?
A key
Rain-wet twine conducted the charge to the key, which could then charge a Leyden jar.
Q 19Which pair of terms for electrical charge did Franklin introduce, replacing 'vitreous' and 'resinous'?
Positive and negative
He also coined 'battery' and was first to state the conservation of charge.
Q 20Which Royal Society award did Franklin receive in 1753 for his work on electricity?
Copley Medal
Three years later he became one of the few 18th-century Americans elected a Fellow of the Society.
Q 24Franklin's rejected 1754 plan for a unified colonial government is named after which New York town?
Albany
He drew partly on his observations of the Iroquois and their common council.
Q 25To which post did the Second Continental Congress appoint Franklin on 26 July 1775, the first to hold it?
United States Postmaster General
He had been Philadelphia's postmaster since 1737 and deputy postmaster-general for the colonies since 1753.
Q 26Which British official ridiculed Franklin for an hour before the Privy Council in 1774 over the Hutchinson letters?
Alexander Wedderburn
The humiliation in the 'Cockpit' ended Franklin's hopes of a peaceful settlement between Britain and the colonies.
Q 27Franklin sat on which body, appointed in June 1776, that drafted the Declaration of Independence?
Committee of Five
Jefferson did the drafting; Franklin, then 70, made small edits and later signed as the oldest signer.
Q 28In which Paris suburb did Franklin live during his years as envoy to France?
Passy
The house was lent by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont; his 16-year-old grandson Temple came as secretary.
Q 29Franklin served on a 1784 French royal commission that discredited which fashionable healing craze?
Mesmerism
Its blind trials showed the 'animal magnetism' cures worked only when patients expected them, an early demonstration of the placebo effect.
Q 30Franklin was the only person to sign all three of which founding documents?
Declaration, Treaty of Paris and Constitution
He also signed the 1778 Treaty of Alliance with France, which he had negotiated himself.