From the Smithsonian magazine archives, some of our favorite reader questions about our nation's founding upon its 250th ...

Electricity isn't just wires and outlets. Its history includes fake experiments, brutal PR wars, and vehicles that predate ...

This Saturday, Jan. 17, marks Benjamin Franklin’s birthday — his 320th, as a matter of fact! He was born in Boston in 1706 ...

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts, 320 years ago. In recent days, I discovered Ken Burns’s two episodes on Benjamin Franklin that aired in April 2022 on PBS.

This unique series of stories and photos about our founding fathers will be published in our papers throughout 2026, in ...

January is more than just a month of frigid temperatures and potential snow days. A month named after the Roman god Janus, ...

Intriguingly, this is what’s known as the “Ben Franklin effect”: when, after doing someone a favor, you actually begin to like them more, despite having felt neutral or indifferent about them ...

Donald Trump is not the first American to say that he wanted to possess Canada. At the very start of the U.S., Benjamin Franklin pushed the same agenda You can save this article by registering for ...

Benjamin Franklin’s line is often quoted at graduations and printed on classroom walls. Its value lies not in inspiration, but in how accurately it describes the long arc of learning. Knowledge does ...

When negotiating peace after the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin wanted Britain to give Canada to the newly formed United States as compensation, author Madelaine Drohan says. (Credit: National ...

Log-in to bookmark & organize content - it's free! University of Mississippi graduate history instructor Kelsa Pellettiere talked about Benjamin Franklin's role in France during the American ...