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ELA 11 2.8a: Benjamin Franklin 37 Views
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Description:
Benjamin Franklin was a true Renaissance man, so fitting his whole life into an autobiography must have been quite the task. But if anyone was up to it, it was the man himself.
Transcript
- 00:01
No Uh ben franklin He was on the upgrade list
- 00:05
for flights he hadn't even booked He won the lifetime
- 00:08
achievement award twice His blood smelled like cologne Benjamin franklin
- 00:13
was the most interesting man in the world All right
- 00:16
so maybe he wasn't that interesting but the spectacle Ben
Full Transcript
- 00:19
was an amazing guy And fortunately for you he left
- 00:22
behind an autobiography detailing all of his exploits Not only
- 00:26
is this text a great early example of an autobiographical
- 00:29
work and an important addition to the eighteenth century historical
- 00:33
record but it gives us the low down on how
- 00:35
benjamin franklin became such an awesome dude Well born in
- 00:38
boston in seventeen oh six Ben loved books from the
- 00:41
beginning it was obvious he was destined for a career
- 00:44
as a printer Unfortunately his first job with his older
- 00:47
brother didn't work out so well so he booked it
- 00:50
unintended to philadelphia Well after working as a printer for
- 00:53
several people then went into business for himself he printed
- 00:57
a newspaper that was high tech back in those days
- 01:00
he also founded a debating society called june toe with
- 01:04
their powers combined they formed a subscription library you know
- 01:07
Kind of like go shmoop does not content with what
- 01:09
he achieved so far been set out to make himself
- 01:12
a better person which doesn't pay as well as printing
- 01:14
but you know to each his own ben came up
- 01:17
with a list of virtues and work every day to
- 01:19
personally achieve and maintain them for choose you still do
- 01:22
that Not so much Well in his spare time he
- 01:25
wrote poor richard's almanac and help the bruto found a
- 01:28
fire department but ben didn't stop there He became the
- 01:31
general assembly clerk in pokes master for philadelphia in the
- 01:35
june toe founded the university of pennsylvania He also worked
- 01:38
to establish america's first public hospital because nobody likes encountering
- 01:42
dead bodies in the street You don't We're talking about
- 01:45
totally killed person's appetite with the french and indian war
- 01:48
on the horizon been introduced to plan to unite the
- 01:50
american colonies and they weren't united at that point seriously
- 01:55
Well when that didn't work out he threw himself into
- 01:57
a new project building up pennsylvania's defense's Oh and on
- 02:01
his lunch break he conducted the experiments on electricity that
- 02:04
would earn him a place with the royal society it's
- 02:07
A hoity toity group You'll notice that we haven't even
- 02:09
mentioned the role benjamin franklin played in the american revolution
- 02:12
or his days as a diplomat in france that's because
- 02:15
ben didn't write about those areas of his life seriously
- 02:18
man left big old chunks of his career out of
- 02:20
his autobiography Maybe he just had too much stuff swimming
- 02:22
around inside that gigantic melon of his Remember it all
- 02:25
Not that it matters when you can get the gist
- 02:27
of what kind of founding father franklin was from his
- 02:30
autobiography As it exists He was an inventor he was
- 02:33
an organizer He was interested in pretty much everything except
- 02:38
sitting on a spot playing video games He also had
- 02:41
a special gift for getting ahead while also making life
- 02:44
better for everyone around him Benjamin franklin ladies and gentlemen
- 02:47
the man the myth the legend the spectacle model boys 00:02:53.083 --> [endTime] say
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