No sooner had Benjamin Franklin entered the world than he was at odds with the church and authority. Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 in the Puritan town of Boston. Unfortunately for his parents, January 17th was a Sunday and back then it was believed that a child was born on the same day of the week that it had been conceived. This would have meant that his parents had engaged in marital relations on some Sabbath day nine months previous, which was considered a sin by the staunch and strictly religious Puritans. Franklin's father rushed him, only a few hours old, out into the cold to be baptized at a local church. He told everyone Benjamin had been born two days earlier to avoid shame.

Franklin worked as an apprentice in his older brother's print shop and was essentially an indentured servant to him. Franklin's questioning mind and penchant for hijinx put him at odds with his overbearing brother, who beat him regularly. When Franklin would try to leave the shop and find another master, his brother would see to it that no other print house in Boston would take him.

By the age of 17, Franklin felt like an outcast and wanted to leave Boston, but his family wouldn't allow it. So, he told a ship's captain that he needed to discreetly escape the city because he had "gotten a naughty girl with child" and her friends were trying to force him to marry her. The sympathetic captain snuck the runaway out of town and Franklin ended up in Philadelphia.

Franklin found work in a local print shop and later was given lodging at the home of a Mr. Read. Much to Franklin's amusement, Mr. Read's daughter Deborah was the pretty girl who had sneered at him upon his arrival in Philadelphia.

The religious group known as the Quakers dominated southeastern Pennsylvania at that time. This moderate, subdued sect was much more accepting of Franklin's fondness for pranks, funny stories and satire than the Puritans had been. In Philadelphia, Franklin met other young people who enjoyed reading and thought like him. He spent evenings with them discussing books and learning to speak French, Spanish and Italian. He was known to wake at 5 AM to read for three hours before work. During the day, he worked hard at the print shop and saved his money by "industry and frugality."

Some years later, Franklin was able to open his own print shop, where he published his famous periodical Poor Richard's Almanac. The author of the almanac was Richard Saunders, a hen-pecked Quaker astrologer. Of course, Richard Saunders did not exist, he was merely a fictional creation of Franklin's.

Many proverbs still in use in America came from the pen of Ben Franklin's Richard Saunders. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," "God helps them that help themselves," "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise," "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," "A penny saved, is a penny earned" and "Nothing is certain but death and taxes" are just a few examples.

Although Franklin's print shop and almanac were a financial success, he tried to live a simple life with very few luxuries. He approved of acquiring wealth and saving money, but he loathed ostentation. He wrote, "We kept no idle servants, our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest."

He might have stayed with his successful printing company and continued to increase his wealth, but at the age of 42, he chose instead to retire from business life. "I would rather have it be said, 'He lived usefully' than, 'He died rich.'" He gave up the pursuits of a middle-class businessman and began living the life of an educated gentleman. He continued his avid reading and began to conduct scientific experiments and develop technological innovations.

The most well-known are his experiments with electricity. He was considered to be quite the wizard of electricity in his time, but contrary to popular belief, Franklin did not discover electricity. Electricity had been a curiosity for some time. Franklin had been toying with it for years, using it to shock (literally) and amuse his guests. He even used it to slaughter animals. He deemed the use of electricity for this purpose to be completely painless. He attested to this from personal experience, having once accidentally knocked himself unconscious with an electrical jolt while attempting to electrocute a turkey.

He was truly a "renaissance man." Unlike today's world of highly specialized occupations, in Franklin's time, the ability to solve problems in many different fields of interest was seen as an asset, not a liability. Franklin had a reputation as a do-it-yourself problem solver. This, plus his diplomatic nature made the public believe he could solve the problems facing the colonies and led to him entering politics.

Since Franklin was well-respected as a statesman and a writer, he was elected to the committee that wrote the Declaration of Independence in 1775. However, the actual task of drafting the Declaration was given to Thomas Jefferson. One story says that the founding fathers didn't want Franklin to write it because they were afraid he would put jokes in it.

After the signing of the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock told Franklin that the country had an important task for him. Franklin jokingly replied that he was too old to be a soldier. What Hancock really wanted was a minister in France to raise money and generate diplomatic support for the revolutionary war. Franklin agreed, saying, "That's alright, a soldier has to die for his country, but a diplomat only has to lie for his country."

Europeans believed that America was a wild, untamed land overrun with blood-thirsty Indians. They assumed that most Americans were savage pioneers. Franklin did nothing to dispel these myths. In fact, he had fostered them by sending tall tales to the gullible British press as a prank, telling of an America where sheep have so much wool on them that they need a cart just to support their tail.

On leaving for France as a diplomat, Franklin said, "I'll look the part of an American--not like a prince, but a pioneer." Arriving in France, he disembarked from his ship wearing a fur cap, no powdered wig and simple workman's clothes. This manner of dress was considered scandalous.

The French people loved Franklin and he became a celebrity. His likeness was cast on cameos which people wore on necklaces. Prints, busts and pictures of Franklin were extremely popular. Little French girls collected ceramic Ben Franklin dolls.

Women adored Ben Franklin and Ben Franklin adored women. When word got out in Paris that Franklin had a weakness for pretty ladies, everywhere he went, mademoiselles presented themselves to have their neck kissed by the noble savage. They were charmed by his witty sense of humor and his pensive manner. It was said that Franklin with "equal ease could... charm alike the lightning and the ladies."

In 1785, Franklin returned to the U.S. He was aware that he was getting on in years. "By my rambling digressions, I perceive myself to be getting old," he wrote. But his wit and sense of humor never left him. He made light of his deteriorating physique, calling himself a "fat old fellow" and "Dr. Fatsides."

Ben Franklin died in 1790. At his funeral, almost 20,000 citizens came by to pay their respects, which was almost half of Philadelphia's population.

It was Franklin the cracker-barrel philosopher, the champion of the working man that has made him one of the most endearing characters in American history. Ben Franklin was America's first rags to riches story. He was the son of a Boston candle maker with little formal education and no birth rights who went on to become a founding father of our country. Franklin's epitaph, which he wrote for himself at age 22, reflected the sense of humor and fondness for pragmatism that made him an American folk hero: