Benjamin Franklin’s Dark And Scandalous Habits Are Showing A Side Of Him We Rarely See

Even Benjamin Franklin’s childhood was a little unusual: his parents had 17 children total, with Ben as the fifteenth and final boy born to the family. From a young age, he helped out his parents with the family trade, which was soap and candle-making.

But making soap and candles only kept Ben’s interest for so long, and by the time he was 12, he started an apprenticeship at his older brother’s printing shop. By that time, he’d only had two years of formal education…not that it mattered much.

You see, Ben didn’t need formal education to be a genius. He had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, so much so that he’d often spend money on books instead of food. The inventor, statesman, and scholar we know today was almost completely self-taught.

With his sight always set on the future, Ben Franklin had some ideas that baffled other people of his time. For example, when he became a vegetarian at 16 years old, he claimed that he was “frequently chid for [his] singularity.” It was his individuality that got him into writing.

His first writing job wasn’t even done under his own name. When people read “Mrs. Dogood’s” column about fashion, women’s rights, marriage, and religion, they were actually reading the insights of 16-year-old Benjamin Franklin. No one caught on…

In fact, the Widow Dogood was so popular that “she” actually received letters proposing marriage from several eligible bachelors in Boston. When Ben finally came clean about being Mrs. Dogood to his brother, who owned the newspaper, it wasn’t long before Ben was looking for work elsewhere.

Luckily, Ben Franklin turned out to be a young man of many talents. It may come as a surprise that the man most known for his intelligence was also quite athletic, and he excelled at swimming. One of his very first inventions was a pair of hand paddles used for gliding through choppy waters.

When he wasn’t exercising his body, he was exercising his mind by playing chess. He sought out chess competitions as early as the 1730s, and the complicated game became a favorite of his. In 1999, he was even inducted into the U.S. Chess Hall of Fame.

Hobbies aside, Ben couldn’t help but feel that everyday life could be a whole lot easier. One of his earliest innovations was in 1736, when he noticed that fire prevention and safety needed an upgrade. With that, he created the country’s first volunteer fire department.

He called the volunteer fire department the Union Fire Company, but everyone else jokingly called it “Benjamin Franklin’s Bucket Brigade.” Even with his experience fighting fires and experimenting with electrical currents, Ben didn’t always have the best luck with flames.

He sustained a burn to his ego — luckily, any physical burns were minor — when his attempt to electrically cook a turkey went awry. He wanted to kill the turkey via electrical shock, but he ended up shocking himself instead! Still, his daredevil ways weren’t harmed in the process.

On the contrary, Ben Franklin had an adventurous side that couldn’t be contained by one or three electrical shocks. In order to prove that tornadoes were actually made up of air and not water, Ben decided to get up close and personal with one.

He became one of the country’s first storm chasers in 1754 when, fascinated by the “amazingly rapid” whirlwind, he chased a tornado into the woods while on horseback. His inventive and untraditional ways became known in the U.S. and across the pond.

By the mid-1700s, Ben Franklin became one of America’s first celebrities. Known for his inventions, writings, and odd habits as much as for his politics, Ben’s recognizable face could be found on snuff boxes and engravings in many European households.

Still, as every fan knows, every celebrity has their secrets. Construction workers in 1998 thought they’d accidentally uncovered one of Ben Franklin’s most damning secrets when, while converting his historical house into a museum, they unearthed something disturbing in his basement.

They discovered bones belonging to six children and four adults in the basement, and they were all dated back at least 200 years to Ben Franklin’s time. So, was one of America’s most beloved founding fathers actually a serial killer?

After a thorough investigation (and a deep dive into the history books,) it was deduced that one of Ben Franklin’s friends, anatomist William Hewson, used Ben’s basement to set up an anatomy lab. Whether or not Ben knew about the bodies is unknown, though…

Besides, Ben probably had his mind on more engaging matters at the time. As he reached middle age, his romantic life only got busier. Despite his 38-year marriage, he was known for having countless mistresses in his life, and was a big proponent of casual sex.

Sure, women were drawn to his inventive spirit and boundless intelligence, but everyone was captivated by one of Ben Franklin’s strangest inventions: the glass armonica. This musical instrument was inspired by “singing glasses,” and was a huge hit in the U.S. and beyond.

The glass armonica has since faded into obscurity, but it certainly made an impact when it was first unveiled in 1761. Beethoven and Mozart incorporated it into a few of their compositions, and Ben himself even said that it “has given me the greatest personal satisfaction.”

The older Ben got, the more interested he became in making a lasting impression on future generations. One way he hoped to achieve this was by, to most people’s confusion, creating his own alphabet, which was designed with some pretty strange rules in mind.

In order to be “more natural” than the existing alphabet, Ben removed letters he thought were unnecessary in everyday life, like C, J, Q, W, X, and Y. It made sense to him, but it didn’t exactly catch on. Of course, many of Ben Franklin’s other innovations are a different story.

In 1775, Benjamin Franklin became the first Postmaster General of the United States. That meant he was in charge of all the post offices between Massachusetts and Georgia, and he introduced history-making practices like an accounting process for postmasters and day and night mail delivery.

1776 was a historic year for Ben Franklin, and not just because of the American Revolution. At 70 years old, he became an international fashion inspiration thanks to his fur hats. Europeans loved the style of this authentic frontiersman, and they incorporated fur hats into their own wardrobes.

Even weirder, French women started to wear wigs that they called “coiffure a la Franklin” because the wigs mimicked his own natural ‘do. As the U.S. ambassador to France after the war, Ben Franklin spread some…unique ideas around to the French people.

One of his most infamous essays encouraged French and American people alike to embrace a more improper bodily function: farting. Yes, the man who helped give the American people independence also hoped to free them from this smelly stigma as well!

Perhaps most importantly, Franklin never patented his inventions. Why? Because he believed that his inventions had the power to improve overall life for everyone, and therefore belonged to the people — not to him. His inventions certainly changed the world forever…

Yes, founding father Ben Franklin is known for his political, industrial, and scientific contributions to the early United States, but he also helped bring a legendary monster to life — and all because he couldn’t control his petty side.

Apparently, Ben Franklin was embroiled in an intense rivalry with Titan Leeds, mainly because of their competing almanacs. Franklin believed that the only way to squash Leeds as competition was to spread terrifying lies about him around town.

He used “astrological techniques” to publish in his almanac that Leeds would die in October of that year. He also started to refer to Leeds as a ghost. At the time, these lies were taken very seriously.

This Franklin-started rumor coincided with a story of a winged beast that dated as far back as 1735 — and, naturally, the myth involved the most popular (and feared) kind of people of that time period.

Then, there was a creature referred to as the “Leeds Devil,” supposedly named after a witch named Mother Leeds. The story goes that Mother Leeds was impregnated by the Devil himself, hence the “Leeds Devil” baby.

Another version of the story claims that Mother Leeds was already a mother of 12 children and that, in a moment of desperation after discovering another pregnancy, cursed her 13th child as a product of the underworld.

According to legend, the newborn transformed into a winged beast that killed the midwife before Santa Claus-ing up the chimney and into the night. So it was these stories that were in the heads of Americans at the time of Benjamin Franklin’s rumor-mongering.

So his claims did the trick, and before long, a combination of Leeds’ “ghostly” form and his family’s unfortunate crest of dragons solidified the name and myth of the Leeds Devil. And as the 1800s continued, the legend only grew.

Though this version isn’t as fantastical as the earlier myths, it is filled with enough gossip, politics, and good old fashioned mudslinging to last a lifetime. It even involves the biggest bad boy of the colonial era…

Napoleon’s older brother, Joseph Bonaparte, claimed he saw the creature while hunting in Bordentown in 1820. When a score of livestock were found dead in 1840, their fate was attributed to the dastardly doings of the Leeds Devil.

Still, sightings of the beast didn’t really kick off until 1909, when encounters all over the state started being reported in newspapers. “What mysterious tracks are these?” the Asbury Park Press asked its dumbfounded readers.

Soon, the Leeds Devil became the “Jersey Devil.” Most people relegate the Devil to a fun myth swapped around a campfire, but in the olden days, it was way more than just a story. In fact, New Jersey residents didn’t just talk about it — they feared it.

As more and more sightings occurred, people described a creature with large bat-like wings that made it easier for the beast to, well, soar menacingly through the night sky. It also has a horse or goat head, which was only one of its more “devilish” features…

What tied the whole image together are the beast’s pointy horns and dragon-like tail. If this image alone didn’t have you heading for the hills, then the creature’s most distinguishing feature definitely will.

The Jersey Devil was believed to emit a blood-curdling scream as its chosen form of communication as opposed to a more subtle growl or bark. We wouldn’t want to stumble upon this creature in the dead of night…

Soon enough, even the slightest disturbances were blamed on the Jersey Devil, from shadows falling across windows to men finding decomposed animal carcasses in the woods. It was no longer a spine-chilling ghost story, but a very real threat.

In 1951, a group of boys in Gibbston ran frantically from the woods, claiming to have seen the Jersey Devil. They were only a few of the many Jersey residents who apparently saw the beast up close and personal.

This threat grew to such a frenzy that in 1960, merchants near Camden offered $10,000 to anyone who managed to capture the beast. It’s a shame it was never caught, considering how they planned to build it a snazzy new zoo.

The story of the Jersey Devil has again become familiar campfire fare, but the question remains: if you saw an oddly-shaped beast flying above your neighborhood 7/11, would you risk it all to become $10,000 richer?