Was Benjamin Franklin A Murderer?
They found a bunch of bones in his basement, so…
There are a lot of fun facts about our friendly founding father, Benjamin Franklin. He was full of quips and wisdoms such as “a penny saved is a penny earned.” He was a prolific inventor of some popular products, like the bifocal, and a few not-so-popular products, like the crotchless bee suit. He took air baths for… health reasons.
But perhaps something you didn’t know about good old Benny was that he had a few skeletons in his closet.
That is, his basement.
In 1998, a group called the Friends of Benjamin Franklin House decided to convert Franklin’s London townhouse, where he resided from 1757 to 1777, into a museum. But when they started renovating the house, they discovered something startling.
A pit full of about 1,200 human bones.
Further examinations revealed the bones to all date about 200 years (for those of you who, like me, detest math, that’s the same time Franklin was living in the house). In total, they determined the bones to belong to ten bodies, six of which were children.
So… Whodunnit?
Luckily for all us Franklin fans, he almost certainly did not murder nearly a dozen people and bury their bones in his…
