Among the reasons my friends make fun of me is the inordinate amount of research I do for the sake of a stupid cartoon. (Of course, I find myself imagining how much more stupid they would be if I did less research.) But just to prove that I am capable of it, I’ve decided to go this one alone. No dictionaries. No encyclopedias. No biographies. No Web sites. Nothing. Just my own recollections of the subject. Verification be damned.
Benjamin Franklin was a true Renaissance man. He was born in the 16th century (he was already an old man of 343 during the American War of Independence) in a log cabin, to a poor family, and he came over to Boston in the Mayflower.
His father had a number of jobs including soap making and wool coloring. Tired of all this lying and dying, Benjamin ran away from home to join the circus, but ended up in Philadelphia. There, he started printing Standard & Poor Richard’s Almanack: a publication chock full of now-familiar aphorisms ("Don’t smell the sweaty stuff. It’s all sweaty stuff") and useful tidbits of information ("Pour milk on your front step to keep the vampires away"). The magazine still exists today. We know it as TV Guide.
His inventions and contributions are too numerous to mention. They are as follows:
- After having witnessed the first manned balloon launch in Paris, he invented the Bi-Fokker - an aeroplane with double decker wings - that he flew solo to Massachusetts in order to participate in the Boston Tea Party;
- He invented the Franklin Mint, a tasty after-dinner chocolate treat that could be purchased in four easy payments;
- He invented the Franklin Turntable, which greatly contributed to the Revolution;
- As a lark, he suggested the use of the Christmas wreath as a life saving mechanism;
- He invented the lark;
- He invented the gall stone (from which he proceeded to suffer);
- He invented the color orange;
- He discovered dirt;
- His foreign policy skills were so legendary that we now refer to a well-negotiated deal as a BFD, for Benjamin Franklin Diplomacy;
- He was the only person to have signed all of the major documents associated with the birth of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Magna Carta, and the Rosetta Stone.
And in a nutshell, we have Mr. Benjamin Franklin - accomplished printer, inventor, philosopher, statesman, and chimney sweep.
(There! And I didn’t once have to look anything up.)