It’s the birthday of one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1706, a man who may have done more to shape the (eventual) United States than any other single person. Franklin was a printer and publisher, author, statesman, diplomat, inventor, scientist, the first U.S. Postmaster General, and the first U.S. minister to France. Among other things.

Franklin was one of 17 children of Josiah Franklin, a soap and candle maker. He was apprenticed to his brother at the age of 12 and learned the printing trade, read voraciously and taught himself to write well, ran away to Philadelphia at 17, and eventually became publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette. In 1732 or 1733 he also started publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack (which is fine, I guess, if you’re into almanacs), and by then was also manufacturing paper money for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. In 1739 he came up with a brilliant way to foil counterfeiters (brace yourself for a really fun fact): he purposely misspelled the word “Pennsylvania” on the bills, knowing that counterfeiters would assume *those* bills were fake and would correct the spelling *back* on their own bills.

By the late 1740s Franklin was wealthy and had achieved official Gentleman status. He spent a lot of time in London from the 1750s to the 1770s, gadded about Europe with Important People, and continued his electrical research. When things heated up in 1776, he went to France and played brilliantly off the French sympathies for America, which was terribly important for the war effort—but you know all this, as you also know that he invented the Franklin stove, bifocals, and the urinary catheter. At 70, he was the oldest signer of the Declaration of Independence and the only Founding Father to sign all three of the documents that freed the colonies: the D of I, the Treaty of Paris, and the United States Constitution. He influenced the study of demographics and studied ocean currents, naming the Gulf Stream. He established a volunteer firefighting company, an insurance company, a library, a hospital.

Franklin had nothing whatsoever to do with the invention of the pizza. He didn’t even try. Pizza would not be invented for another 100 years or so, and no thanks to Franklin.

But everything else? That was Franklin.

He died back in the States on April 17, 1790, at the age of 84, and I’m just going to assert that the man was probably exhausted.

Have a happy hump day, and if you can’t keep up with Franklin, at least stay scrupulously honest to the data.