Franklin was the fifteenth child and youngest son in a family of 20. He spent two years at the Boston Latin School before dropping out at age ten and going to work for his father, and then his brother, as a printer.
He once proposed the turkey as the national symbol, but it lost to the American Bald Eagle. He wrote to his daughter, “For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country. He is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly." How prescient he was. Oh, and he wore funny clothes.