How well do you know your trivia on Benjamin Franklin? Here is a quick brush-up.
• He was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1706.
• He became a printer’s apprentice in 1718 to his brother James.
• In 1723, he ran away to Philadelphia. He loved the printing business but despised working for his brother James.
• He worked for printers in Philadelphia and then opened his own print shop in 1728.
• He said, after signing the Declaration of Independence, “We must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
• He helped with the writing of the Declaration of Independence.
• He invented the Pennsylvania Fireplace. Most people called it the Franklin Stove.
• He invented the lightning rod, but refused to patent it and make any money off of his invention: he simply wanted people to be safe from structure fires that were many back in that day.
• He conducted the famous experiment with a kite and a key and proved that lightning was indeed electricity. Most people did not believe that in those days.
• He signed the treaty ending the Revolutionary War in Paris, along with the British.
• He was a printer, publisher, writer, scientist, and diplomat.
• He spent most of his life in Philadelphia.
• Philadelphia was the largest city in the Pennsylvania colony.
• He had little schooling and finished school at age 10 after studying Latin and arithmetic.
• He was born into a very poor family and was the 15th of 17 children.
• His parents’ names were Josiah and Abiah Franklin.
• He wanted to be a sailor.
• In the 1700s, many people could not read. The Bible was the only book owned by most families.
• Ben used to secretly borrow books from a friend who worked in a bookstore and returned them each morning and the owner never knew.
• His brother James started a newspaper called the New England Courant.
• At age 16, he wrote letters to the Courant under the name of Silence Dogood, which his brother published. When his brother finally discovered it was Ben writing the letters, he was furious.
• Ben ran way to Philadelphia at the age of 17 because he loved printing but despised working for his brother.
• He caught the eye of Deborah Read when he arrived in Philadelphia, because he was carrying loaves of bread under his arms, because he discovered prices were much better in Philadelphia than in Boston.
• He married Deborah Read in 1730, and she raised his illegitimate infant son as her own.
• When he was 22, he opened his own print shop.
• He started a newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette and it was the most popular in the colonies. He then franchised it later in other colonies.
• He wrote Poor Richard’s Almanack, which was wildly successful in the colonies. It was second in sales throughout the colonies only to the Bible.
• He wrote, “A penny saved is a penny earned.”
• People still quote his Poor Richard proverbs today.
• He became very rich as a printer and writer and he retired when he was 42 and sold his businesses and directed his energy to science.
• He invented bifocal glasses.
• He convinced the British to withdraw the Stamp Act.
• He spent many years in England.
• Once the American Revolution began, he secretly sailed to France to avoid being captured and hung as a traitor by England.
• He convinced the French to send many supplies and troops to the American Revolution, although the Declaration of Independence was banned from being read in France.
• He had one daughter and she was named Sally.
• He had two sons, William and Francis.
• Francis, known as Franky, died of smallpox when he was four years old. Franklin sorrowed over this for the rest of his life.
• His son William was named Royal Governor to the colony of New Jersey. He was then jailed for remaining loyal to the King of England. Ben basically disowned him.
• He was eighty years old when he returned from France to Philadelphia.
• In 1787, he contributed much to the creation of the US Constitution.
• It was Ben’s idea to have a Congress with two parts: the House and Senate.
• His idea to band the 13 colonies together came from the Iroquois Indians.
• He died in 1790 at the age of 84 of pleurisy at his home in Philadelphia.
Source: The Franklin Institute, www.fi.edu.
