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Re: B.Franklin



I DID NOT KNOW THIS.
According to New York Times Magazine (Sunday, 12/22/1996, page 17) Franklin
nearly killed himself in 1750 (2 years before the kite experiment). He was
trying "to electrocute his holiday turkey as a parlor trick" ... claiming
that the meat becomes "uncommonly tender". He used two metal wires inserted
into Leyden jars. "Absent-mindendly touching the wires to the chain that
connected the jars, Frankiln himself became a conductor. Witnesses reported
a loud flash and crack. Franklin passed out; his body convulsed briefly
before he came to, left with an aching chest and a swollen spot where the
charge apparently entered his head. It was, he wrote later, an experiment
'I desire never to repeat' ".
ludwik kowalski


I had heard that it was a chicken that he was trying to electrocute, but a
turkey makes more sense as he tried to get the founders of our government to
adopt the turkey as our national bird.

Roger Pruitt