An auction notice caught my eye, about a clock designed by Dr Franklin. Papers online has this: James Ferguson: Account of Franklin’s Three-Wheel Clock Printed in James Ferguson, Select Mechanical Exercises: Shewing how to construct different Clocks, Orreries, and Sun-Dials, on Plain and Easy Principles,…(Second edition, London, 1778), pp. 1-4. A Clock shewing the Hours, …
John Kelly of the Washington Post features Squirrel Week each year, and he’s all over Mungo. At the end of his most recent addition he clarifies where Mungo actually died: But it turns out that when Mungo died, Twyford House was being renovated. The Shipleys were living at a place called Northwood House, 14 miles …
A nice mention of the home of the Franklinia tree in John Bartram’s Home, though the formal name is not spelled exactly correctly. See Missouri Botanical Garden’s entry.
A friend in Oregon started sending pictures of the fabulous WOODEN statue of Dr. Franklin in front of the newly-renovated Benjamin Franklin High School. It’s a very handsome thing, and I hope to post his pictures here shortly.
This article discusses a portrait owned by Benjamin Franklin of Benjamin Lay. Some excerpts: “Stories about our discovery appeared first in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and in January 1979 The Magazine Antiques published a story by Karen M. Jones about the discovery of a rare William Williams painting.” The story quoted a letter from Ben Franklin …
There are at least two statues of Dr. Franklin in New Orleans. The most public one is in Lafayette Square: This is fully discussed at the Best of New Orleans website (content duplicated below). The article mentions that the original statue has been relocated to the Ben Franklin High School, where the incoming principal, Patrick …
Hosted and administered by the Phillips Museum of Art at Franklin & Marshall College, the Franklin Artifacts database is a museum without walls; an electronic catalogue of known surviving objects with a close association to Benjamin Franklin. The site is online at www.benfranklin300.org/frankliniana
From Yahoo TV: Why was Breaking Bad star Dean Norris MIA during the show’s triumph at the Emmys on Monday night? He decided to go fly a kite instead. Well, that’s one of the things he could have been doing anyway, as Norris missed the Emmys festivities because he was off in Romania filming his …
This article announces that Dean Norris of Breaking Bad will portray Dr. Franklin in a six-part miniseries on the History Channel.
Announcement from CT Trust for Historic Preservation (from Facebook): We will be writing a State Register nomination for the Benjamin Franklin statue located in front of the Silas Bronson Library in Waterbury for our Creative Places Trail. The statue was created by Connecticut sculptor, Paul Wayland Bartlett and completed in 1921. It was cast in …
