Franklin, Benjamin (Ben Franklin)

US diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, and printer

1718 - Becomes printer's apprentice to James, his older brother. 

1724 - 1726 - Lives and works as a printer in London. Returns to Philadelphia to clerk a store.

1727 - Founds the Junto group. 

1728 - Established printing business in Philadelphia

1729 - Purchases the Pennsylvania gazette newspaper. 

1730 - Benjamin marries Deborah Read. 

1731 - Main founder of Library Co. of Philadelphia (1st subscription library in America)

1732-1757 - Published "Poor Richard's Almanack" (under pseudonym Richard Saunders)

1736 - 1737- founds Union Fire Company and is appointed postmaster of Philadelphia. 

1740 - Inventor and eponym of Franklin stove

1754 - Pennsylvania delegate to Albany Congress, proposed Plan of Union

1769-1790 - Founder and 1st president of American Philosophical Society

- Developed fluid model of electric current, consisting of motion of microscopic charged particles

- Proposed experiment demonstrating lightning to be a form of electricity

- Invented lightning rod

1773 - Wrote satiric pamphlet "Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One"

1775 - Lives in london and works for repeal of stamp act.

1785 - Returns to America.

1787 - Signs the constitution, becomes a delegate to the constitutional convention

1790 ( April 17) - dies in Philadelphia

• "We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately."
• "We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."
• "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
• "There never was a good war, or a bad peace."
• "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."