Five Things You Probably Never Knew About Benjamin Franklin
Robert Allison is a professor of history at Suffolk University and teaches in the Harvard Extension School. He has received the Extension School’s Petra Shattuck Award for teaching and has been awarded the Suffolk’s Student Government Association award for teaching three times. Professor Allison has written books about the American Revolution, the history of Boston, and the Barbary Wars, and is co-editor of The Essential Debate on the Constitution. He is an elected Fellow of the American Antiquarian Society and the Massachusetts Historical Society, and President of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
Overview
You know about Benjamin Franklin and the kite. But what more do we know about this first self-made man: the quintessential American who spent a quarter of his life abroad; the printer, satirist, inventor, politician, and diplomat who also found time to invent a musical instrument (both Mozart and Beethoven composed pieces for it) and write a string quartet. Did you know that he is in the chess and swimming Halls of Fame, but that when a Hall of Fame for Great Americans was created, a prominent American historian tried to keep Franklin out? Did you know that Franklin was a friend to both George Whitefield, his era’s greatest Christian evangelist, and David Hume, the century’s greatest skeptic? Franklin’s life has been thoroughly examined, but there are still surprising things to learn about Franklin, the world he lived in, and the world he helped create.