How Much Do You Know About Benjamin Franklin?

Ben Franklin was sometimes rumored to have a double life as a British spy, and these suspicions came largely from his involvement with the Hellfire Club. The exclusive, secret club was founded in London in 1718 by Philip, the Duke of Wharton. The club mocked organized religion with phony ceremonies and claimed the organization’s head was the actual devil.

Ben Franklin wrote that, left to his own devices, he sometimes traveled down “unvirtuous roads,” and to avoid that he compiled a list of “13 Virtues.” He chose the number 13 because it fits into a calendar: He focused on each virtue for a week, and rotated through the list of 13 virtues four times throughout the 52 weeks of the year.

In Benjamin Franklin’s memoirs, he noted that he became a vegetarian at the age of 16 after reading “Wisdom’s Dictates,” a collection of aphorisms by Thomas Tryon. Franklin was a philosophical supporter of vegetarianism throughout his life, although he dipped in and out of the practice, occasionally adding fish to his diet. He cited saving both time and money as benefits of vegetarianism.

While Ben Franklin surely wasn’t the first person to weigh both the good and bad sides of an issue, he is credited by many as the first to specifically promote the pros and cons list as a decision-making technique. In a 1772 letter, Franklin advised his friend, English chemist Joseph Priestley, about a possible career change. He wrote, “My way is, to divide half a sheet of paper by a line into two columns, writing over the one Pro, and over the other Con.”

William Franklin was Ben Franklin’s son from an extramarital relationship, born in February 1730. The founding father’s influence helped get William appointed to the position of royal governor of New Jersey, an office he held from 1763 to 1776. While Ben Franklin supported the American Revolution, William was a Loyalist who was eventually forced into exile in London.

“Die Philadelphische Zeitung” (“The Philadelphia Newspaper”) was the name of the German-language newspaper published by Ben Franklin in 1732. The publication was not only the first German-language newspaper in the United States, but it was the first newspaper in any foreign language published in America.

Using a subscription model, the Library Company of Philadelphia was the first of its kind when it was founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin. At the time, books were rare and expensive, leading Franklin and a group of Philadelphia intellectuals called the Junto to come up with the idea of communally funded and shared reading material. The library began with about 50 members who each paid 40 shillings for access to the repository.

When Benjamin Franklin passed away at the age of 85 in 1790, his final words reportedly were, “A dying man can do nothing easily.” His Philadelphia funeral was attended by 20,000 people at a time when the total population of Philadelphia was only about 28,000.

Ben Franklin had a close relationship with the French government, and he served as the American minister to France from 1779 to 1785. While he was living in France, he picked up a second diplomatic gig, serving as American minister to Sweden from 1782 to 1783. Though Franklin was the U.S. government’s most direct connection to Sweden, he never actually visited the country.

Ben Franklin submitted a number of essays to his brother’s newspaper the “New England Courant” in the 1720s under the pseudonym “Mrs. Silence Dogood.” In his essays, he portrayed himself as a fictitious widow, offering opinions on everything from marriage to current events and religion. The letters gained popularity, and after receiving many marriage proposals from hopeful bachelors, Franklin had to reveal himself to the public.

Just three years before his death, Ben Franklin attended the Constitutional Convention, where he would sign yet another pivotal document in American history. At the convention, the delegates outlined a new form of government, with the three branches we know today: executive, legislative, and judicial. At 81 years old, Franklin was the oldest person to sign the famous document.

Ben Franklin was appointed postmaster of the city of Philadelphia in 1737, and he later served as postmaster general under the British crown. In 1775, he was appointed postmaster general by the Continental Congress, and he became the first person to hold the position in the fledgling United States.

Bifocals are one of Ben Franklin’s most famous inventions, allowing wearers to see both close-up and at a distance using the same lens. Franklin himself suffered from presbyopia, or far-sightedness that develops later in life. In August 1784, Franklin described his excitement for his invention of “double spectacles” to his friend George Whatley in a letter. He happily proclaimed that his eyes were useful once again.

In 1749, Ben Franklin proposed the founding of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Although the polymath was mostly self-taught, he saw the value of higher education and wanted his community to have world-class education opportunities. The school opened in 1751, and Franklin served as its president until 1755. Today, UPenn is one of eight prestigious Ivy League schools in the U.S.

Ben Franklin’s “Join or Die” cartoon is one of the most powerful illustrations of early American history. He drew a snake severed into eight pieces, each labeled as a colony. His powerful caption “Join or Die” rallied colonists from north to south, helping the founding father see his goal of unity realized.

Ben Franklin was born into a modest Bostonian family during a pivotal time in early American history. The self-taught businessman and inventor went on to own a successful printing press in Philadelphia, where he became involved in governmental issues, eventually becoming one of the nation’s Founding Fathers.

Shortly after the start of the Revolutionary War, Ben Franklin returned to Philadelphia for a very important task: to draft the United States’ Declaration of Independence from Great Britain. In this document, the 13 American colonies declared their freedom from the monarchy. Founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were also on the committee. Congress formally adopted the document on July 4, 1776.

From 1732 to 1758, “Poor Richard’s Almanack” was the premiere almanac in the American colonies. It contained must-know information for the citizens of the U.S. East Coast at the time, from calendar dates and weather predictions to fun fodder like recipes and popular sayings. Ben Franklin first published the almanac on December 19, 1732, under the pseudonym Richard Saunders.

Founding father and polymath Ben Franklin was an accomplished statesman, writer, inventor, scientist, publisher, and philosopher. His scientific experiments greatly contributed to the human understanding of how to harness and conduct electricity. Franklin invented the lightning rod in 1740 to help protect homes from electrical fires, and in 1752, Franklin’s famous key-and-kite experiment further demonstrated that lightning was electricity.

If Ben Franklin were alive today, he’d likely be pleased to see his face on a currency note. During his time in the American colonies, he used his printing press to create colonial notes with unique, raised patterns, making money more difficult to counterfeit. Today, Franklin’s portrait is on the face of the $100 bill (sometimes referred to as a “Benjamin”), currently the largest currency note being printed by the U.S. mint.