It’s all about the Benjamins! We raise a glass (beer, of course) to celebrate his birth, January 17, 1706, 308 years ago today.
Bens 1, 2, 3, 4 all from our Galaxy of Images, while the last is a botanical plate of the Franklin tree’s bloom. Native to Georgia, the eponymous tree has been extinct in the wild since the early 1800s but is still cultivated as an ornamental. Get an overview on Wikipedia or see literature mentioning it at the Biodiversity Heritage Library’s site.
Franklin’s Experiments and observations on electricity can be found in our Digital Library, along with his autobiography.