How many Americans could, off the top of their heads, tell you exactly why history remembers Benjamin Franklin? Not many, I suspect, though we all know that he did a great deal worth remembering, even by the standards of a Founding Father. (Something got him on the $100 bill, after all.) Of course, only his biographers could remember the every accomplishment of this “First American,” from helping unite the colonies, to publishing newspapers, to serving as Ambassador to France, to putting US national security at risk, to co-founding the University of Pennsylvania, to inventing bifocals and everything in between. Most Americans can, I suspect, summon to mind the image of Franklin flying a kite with a key on it as well.
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