Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Strange Things For The Sake of Science: Ben Franklin Fries a Turkey

Most of us know that Ben Franklin did things with electricity.  But few of us realize we almost lost him on Dec. 23, 1750.  Ben and his buddies were fixing to fry themselves a turkey, using a built up charge of this magical new electricity.  Franklin got distracted and sent the charge through himself instead.  Fortunately for him and for all of us, his charge was only enough to daze him for a few minutes.  Later on he got together a bigger charge and fried a turkey with it. 

Read this anecdote and many more in the aptly named Electrified Sheep by Alex Boese.  Bed time stories for the geek in all of us.