Weird science
You’ve surely heard of Benjamin Franklin’s experiment involving a key, a kite, and a bolt from above. The Boston-born polymath took care to insulate himself from the risk of electrocution then, but another far-less-publicized investigation didn’t go as smoothly. On Christmas Day, 1750, the Founding Father wrote his brother John about “an Experiment in Electricity that I desire never to repeat.” Though Franklin thought the turkey the noblest of birds — he lobbied to make it our national symbol — he decided to sacrifice one in the name of science. His idea was to try to kill it with an electric current, but that bird was having a lucky day: Franklin accidentally absorbed the full blast himself.
While Franklin almost cooked his own goose, luckily, the only lasting damage was a bruised ego. Franklin gave his brother permission to share the cautionary tale with his friend James Bowdoin, a fellow experimenter in electricity, as long as he didn’t “make it mor Publick, for I am Ashamed to have been Guilty of so Notorious A Blunder.” Oops. Bowdoin not only saw the letter, but made a copy of it — now part of the MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY’s collection — thus immortalizing Franklin’s ill-fated escapade, and sorta making Bowdoin the great-grandfather of the celebrity gossip mag (Founding Fathers: they’re just like us!).
Dude looks like a lady
The MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY has a letter from Paul Revere about a Revolutionary War hero who was in her own right rather revolutionary. Years of labor as an indentured servant left Deborah Sampson with an impressive physique and yearning for independence, so while her marriage-minded peers were trussing up their trousseaus, Sampson cut her hair, bound her breasts, and enlisted in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment under the name Robert Shurtliff. For 18 months, she fought for her fledgling country, braving several battle wounds at Tarrytown — she even extracted a musket ball from her own thigh, fearing the army doctor would discover her secret.
Sampson’s fight didn’t end with the war. After being denied her military pension, she rallied notable names to her cause, including Revere. His 1804 letter of support describes his pleasant surprise upon discovering that Sampson wasn’t “one of the meanest of her Sex,” but a “small, effeminate, and converseable [sic] Woman” who “quit her Soldiers uniform for the more decent apparel of her own Sex.”
Revere fibbed: he actually knew full well that Sampson had indeed kept up the occasional breeches-wearing: to support her husband and three children, she became the first American woman to mount a lecture tour, donning her regimentals for arms demonstrations across New England. But Congress might not have liked the least hint of gender-bending, so Revere told a little white lie to help a fellow freedom-fighter get her well-deserved four dollars a month.
One book you can judge by its cover
Its founders hoped Boston would become the world’s moral beacon, but the City on the Hill has had its fair share of crime, and the BOSTON ATHENAEUM is home to one of the strangest chapters — make that volumes — in felonious history. When notorious local highwayman James Allen knew death was near in 1836, he dictated an account of his misdeeds to the Massachusetts State Prison’s warden, who was also privy to Allen’s last request: to have his sordid life story made into a book with a very special cover treatment — his own skin.
