BEN FRANKLIN. Pioneering Founding Father or some dork who got lucky with a key and a kite?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Poll question: BEN FRANKLIN. Pioneering Founding Father or some dork who got lucky with a key and a kite?

[hobbit709]

1. You're just jealous.

[Dappleganger]

2. He's the dude who wore the coonskin cap in Paris

because he was sick of the pretentious French snobbery.

Yeah, I would totally do him!

[Amerigo Vespucci]

3. That might be the first time someone told me they would "do" Ben Franklin

I mean, I went to college...I knew people who "loved history" and majored in it, but you've taken that love to the next level, I'd say.

:rofl:

:toast:

[TreasonousBastard]

7. Many French women did.

[Bucky]

4. The thing to know about the kite & key thing is that Franklin just made the whole thing up.

He was on the cutting edge of a fad in electrical experiments going on at that time. He performed quite a number of experiments and tried to get them published by the Royal Society, but the president of the Royal Society actually took credit for some of Ben's discoveries disproving the fluid theory of electricity and postulating ideas that would lead to the alternating/direct current theory. However the whole kite, key, and lightning thing was a hoax (if you read his "account" of it, he doesn't actually say he performed the experiment, just implies that it could be done).

I highly recommend reading Bolt of Fate about this "hoax" and the way it may have gotten a Russian amateur scientist killed. If you like Franklin, you will love this book.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

5. Other: Major league pev.

Pictures don't lie:

[Richard Steele]

6. Brilliant man. Even in his 80's, he was bagging panties like a cashier at Victoria's Secret.

And that sure as hell wasn't due to his LOOKS.

[AsahinaKimi]

8. OMG ITS TRUE...

In that painting.. A young curley hair Mel Brooks playing with some gizmo. He really must be the Oldest Man in the world.

[Captain Hilts]

9. He was this country's first rock star. nt