1. He only had two years of formal education.
The man considered the most brilliant American of his age rarely saw the inside of a classroom. Franklin spent just two years attending Boston Latin School and a private academy before joining the family candle and soap making business.
By age 12, he was serving as an indentured apprentice at a printing shop owned by his brother, James. Young Benjamin made up for his lack of schooling by spending what little money he earned on books, often going without food to afford new volumes. He also honed his composition skills by reading essays and articles and then rewriting them from memory.
Despite being almost entirely self-taught, Franklin later helped found the school that became the University of Pennsylvania and received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, the College of William and Mary, the University of St. Andrews and Oxford.
2. Franklin became a hit writer as a teenager.
After his brother James founded a weekly newspaper called the New England Courant in the 1720s, a 16-year-old Franklin began secretly submitting essays and commentary as “Silence Dogood,” a fictitious widow who offered homespun musings on everything from fashion and marriage to women’s rights and religion.
The letters were hugely popular, and
