Benjamin Franklin

On September 24, 2005, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN SR., devoted husband of Lillian Jackson. Friends may call at the family owned MARCH FUNERAL HOME WEST, INC., 4300 Wabash Avenue on Friday after 8:30 A.M. where the family will receive friends on Saturday at 10 A.M. followed by funeral service at 10:30 A.M. See www.marchfh.com

According to President Barack Obama, entrepreneurs and small business owners cannot take credit for their inventions or business success because their accomplishments were only made possible by the government's investments in infrastructure. Is this a relatively recent development, or did it also apply to earlier inventors such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford?  I guess Franklin and Edison were inspired to discover and harness electricity by all of those telephone poles installed by the government that were going unused.

Benjamin Franklin Perry, a retired Black & Decker Corp. test engineer who assisted in the development of the drill that was carried by the astronauts aboard the Apollo 11 moon mission, died of heart failure July 29 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 87. Mr. Perry, the son of a Pennsylvania Railroad tower operator and a homemaker, was born and raised in an Ashland, Baltimore County, rowhouse. "It was called Stone Row, and there were no indoor plumbing facilities or electricity," said his son, Michael S. Perry of Phoenix, Baltimore County.

Dennis James, a heralded armonica virtuoso who lives in upstate New York, will visit Baltimore next weekend to be a soloist with two organizations. The story goes that in 1761, when Benjamin Franklin invented the glass instrument he dubbed the "armonica," he kept it from his wife so he could surprise her by playing it one night after she had gone to bed. "Surprise" was the apt word. She assumed she had died and was hearing the music of the angels. To this day, the sound of the armonica, created by rubbing the rims of water-filled glasses with wet fingers, remains wonderfully ethereal — when you can hear it. There are few masters of this difficult instrument, and opportunities to experience their work don't come around every day. So it's doubly newsworthy that Dennis James, a heralded armonica virtuoso who lives in upstate New York, will visit Baltimore next weekend to be a soloist with two organizations.

What delicacies might Benjamin Franklin request for his 300th birthday, which is being celebrated all over the world this year? One envisions not a menu, but a supermarket bursting with the favorite flavors of this 18th-century foodie. A media mogul of his time - he was simultaneously publisher of the best-selling Poor Richard's Almanack and a prolific writer for Colonial America's most popular newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette - Franklin, who was born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1706, was forever promoting his latest dining discoveries (tofu, rhubarb and kohlrabi being just a few)

PHILADELPHIA - It must have been a curious sight to Philadelphians walking past Fifth and Arch streets the other night. Through the open gate of the nearly 300-year-old burial ground, closed to the public since the Carter administration because of severe deterioration, suddenly there was life. Dozens of people were standing around in freezing temperatures sipping white wine and nibbling on shrimp, sushi and strawberries, mingling with re-enactors dressed as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Frances Hopkinson as a violinist dressed in Colonial garb serenaded them.

Maybe the stranger in a brown waist coat and knee breeches was Benjamin Franklin, and maybe he wasn't, but Friday he held children at Linthicum Elementary School rapt with tales of the statesman/inventor's life and times.Ralph F. Archbold, a 54-year-old Philadelphia actor who portrays Benjamin Franklin at Independence Hall and other venues around the country, took the children back to the 1700s.He told of tall ships that drew him, as a boy, to Boston harbor, where he hid between barrels and watched seaman load and unload ships and heard the captain shout to his crew, "Hoist the saiiills."

A young French damsel seems to be polishing Ben Franklin's bald pate with a feather duster in the hand-colored lithograph depicting his reception at the Court of France in 1778. But it's not a feather duster, says Gerard W. Gawalt, manuscript historian and curator of the exhibition, Ben Franklin: In His Own Words, which opens today at the Library of Congress. "It's supposed to be a laurel wreath," he says. The lithograph is among 75 items from the library's Ben Franklin Collection on display in celebration of Franklin's 300th birthday(on Jan. 17)

Jan. 17 1706: Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston. 1893: Hawaii's monarchy was overthrown as Queen Liliuokalani was forced to abdicate. 1961: In his farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against the rise of "the military-industrial complex."

Edwin Wolf II, 79, a specialist in rare books and bibliography who headed the Library Company of Philadelphia for 32 years before he retired in 1984, died on Wednesday of lung cancer at his home in Philadelphia, his family said. Mr. Wolf was credited with reviving the library, founded in 1731 by Benjamin Franklin and containing the country's only surviving intact Colonial collection of books, maps and related artworks.

It took a few tries to get daylight savings time to stick in the U.S. Benjamin Franklin estimated the idea would have saved 1 million francs per year in candles as a French diplomat in 1784, according to a report in the Library of Congress. The U.S. lagged Germany in adopting it as a wartime policy during World War I, and it was brought back for World War II. It didn't begin as we know it today until 1966. Don't forget to set your clocks forward tomorrow.

Since the earliest days of our foundation, our forefathers and their forefathers have celebrated something resembling National Duck Out of Work for a Drink Day. It's always day of camarederie, merriment, and spending 15 minutes away from what, even Benjamin Franklin, called that cramped gulag that passes for a cubicle. Since last year, when The Awl's Alex Balk, declared it so, August 25 has held the official honor. So, cubicle dwellers of Baltimore, where are you going to go tomorrow when you duck out of work for a drink?

He was supposed to be in Florida right now, prepping with his teammates for a weekend basketball showcase. Instead, the team flew south Thursday afternoon without their 6-foot 5-inch forward, who was a "beast" on the court, his brother said. "He had french fry fingers," Walter Rogers, 19, said of his little brother, Marcus Harvell. His fingers were so long and skinny, he could grip a basketball just with his fingertips, he said. Basketball was his life. Harvell, 18, was a city basketball standout.

For decades, visitors arriving at Benjamin Franklin High School at Masonville Cove have been greeted by a brick wall. And for years, city school leaders said Tuesday, that has sent the wrong message to the Curtis Bay neighborhood, a struggling area whose community high school has long fought to stem its dropout rate. In a celebration Tuesday, past and present Benjamin Franklin students removed the first brick from the walled-over entrance of the school's original building, which next year will house a newly constructed wing of administrative and community offices.

Your article "Reclaiming old Baltimore harbor dumping ground" (May 29) got it right that exciting things are happening in South Baltimore's Masonville Cove. Benjamin Franklin High School, the Curtis Bay/Brooklyn area's high school, is thrilled to have an important role in the clean-up. In order to create a great school option for students next year and beyond, we are transforming Ben Franklin into an environmental sciences school that includes urban agriculture, horticulture and environmental studies programs.

Benjamin Franklin Perry, a retired Black & Decker Corp. test engineer who assisted in the development of the drill that was carried by the astronauts aboard the Apollo 11 moon mission, died of heart failure July 29 at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. He was 87. Mr. Perry, the son of a Pennsylvania Railroad tower operator and a homemaker, was born and raised in an Ashland, Baltimore County, rowhouse. "It was called Stone Row, and there were no indoor plumbing facilities or electricity," said his son, Michael S. Perry of Phoenix, Baltimore County.

Just like the inventor's assistant concealed inside a chess-playing robot, The Mechanical beats with a human heart and soul. But there are so many distracting gears and wheels involved in this world premiere at Theatre Project, so many hidden compartments with false bottoms, it can be difficult for the audience to penetrate to the living core. The MacArthur Award-winning Bond Street Theatre has a fascinating story to tell, a stunning visual theatrical vocabulary, and skilled performers to pull both off. The play, written and directed by Michael McGuigan, melds the familiar, fictitious story of Frankenstein's monster with the less well-known, but equally strange real-life story of a machine named "The Turk."

Annapolis officials say they've believed it all along, but they aren't about to turn down two national accolades that have put the city in the limelight. First came news Wednesday that the city's Main Street was named one of 10 great streets in the country by the American Planning Association, through the organization's Great Places in America program. A day later, Forbes Traveler magazine chimed in to note Annapolis as one of the 20 prettiest towns in America. Mayor Ellen O. Moyer called it a double dose of praise for a city she says deserves the recognition.