There was a pretty impressive lightning storm here last night.  I went outside and watched it for a while.  You could see some giant bolts arcing across the sky and it got me thinking about Benjamin Franklin and how he supposedly discovered electricity by flying a kite in a lightning storm.

Well, first of all, it's a myth that he "discovered" electricity as it was  already known about well before his time.  From what I understand the purpose of his experiment was actually to determine whether or not lightning was electrical in nature.  Because that was something that wasn't known yet.  

There's no actual historical evidence one way or the other that Franklin even actually performed the experiment, but I've got to say that flying a kite in a lightning storm seems like a really bad idea.  I'm sure that he would have taken some sort of safety precautions, but I think it's telling that you don't really hear about people attempting to repeat this experiment.  I, for one, am willing to take it on faith that lightning is electrical and will mess you up.

Speaking of Ben Franklin, did you know he was a total ladies man?  Apparently he was quite the player and liked to get his freak on frequently.  This is the sort of thing they don't tell you about in school, but would make history more interesting.