On this day, January 17, in 1706, author, printer, publisher, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, diplomat and Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Along with inventing the lightning rod, bifocals, the odometer and the glass harmonica, he was a lifelong Freemason, never married but had a common-law wife and an illegitimate son, was ambassador to France and Sweden, the nation’s first postmaster,
President of Pennsylvania, and wrote and published the witty “Poor Richard’s Almanack” as well as other tracts and periodicals; his autobiography (published after his death) is still considered a classic. He died of pleurisy in Philadelphia in 1790 at age 84.
