[Exigence]

Now I suppose we'll have to avoid teaching our children about Benjamin Franklin lest they be ensnared by magic.

This article supports the premise that I have argued before: magic to science is often a continuum from what we don't yet understand to what we do.

[rmlew]

Franklin also created a musical, the armonica.
Noting the sounds created by rubbing water or wine along the edge of a crystal glass. He noted that different amounts of water int he glasses would creat different sounds.
Franklin created an instrument of interlocking glass cups of different sizes with a hole in the midle of each. A spindle is placed in this hole and hung horizontaly. The glasses are then spun slowly around using a mechanical devise. Water is rubbed on the glasses creating an etherial sound.

[modern_orthodox]

His astonished viewers didn't know his cane was filled with oil, which had coated the water.

good thing the EPA wasn't around back then. franklin could have ended up in jail for doing unspeakable harm to the ecosystem.

[lonestar]

Siegfrid or Roy?

[dead]

Ben Franklin turned me into a newt.

(I got better.)

[monkey]

"Of those patriots who made independence possible, none mattered more than Franklin, and only Washington mattered as much"

H. W. Brands (Franklin Biographer)

[Young Rhino]

In addition to being a Trilateralist, CFR member, and Mason, Franklin served as an adjunct professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry teaching defense against the dark arts. To this day, wizards and witches credit Franklin with the invention of the invisibility cloak.

[Born in a Rage]

A serious scientist, Franklin was not above using science to perform a little "magic" now and then. At an English estate in 1772, Franklin boasted that he could quiet the river. Walking to the water's edge, he made sweeping passes over the river with his bamboo cane, and the waters ran smooth. His astonished viewers didn't know his cane was filled with oil, which had coated the water.

He found out how to do that trick by watching what happened to the sea when the ships cook threw oily water into it. He was on his way to merry 'ol England to convince the King and his ilk to let PA people vote about their own taxes :-)

[Looking for Diogenes]

Benjamin Franklin got his best ideas from the Roman goddess Minerva, as demonstraetd by this mural in the U.S. Capitol:

"Minerva, goddess of wisdom and the arts of civilization, with helmet and spear, points to an electric generator creating power stored in batteries, next to a printing press, while inventors Benjamin Franklin, Samuel F. B. Morse, and Robert Fulton watch. At the left, a teacher demonstartes the use of dividers."

Apotheosis of Washington