1

He secretly wrote under a woman's name

While most of today's teenagers are finishing high school and wondering what their first job might be, Benjamin Franklin was already writing newspaper columns under a secret identity .

At just 16, Franklin began writing a series of satirical letters to his older brother James’s newspaper, the New-England Courant in Boston. He wrote them under the name Silence Dogood, a fictional middle-aged woman who offered witty observations about colonial life, morality, and politics. But the public wasn’t the only one "fooled" by the writer. Franklin secretly slipped the letters under the printing-house door at night so his brother wouldn’t know who was behind them. James and his friends enjoyed the letters so much that they published them without realizing that their teenage apprentice was the author. Young Benjamin eventually revealed the secret, and according to historical sources, his brother was not amused.

2

He loved "air baths"

As a Founding Father, Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, Postmaster General of the United States, and U.S. ambassador to France, we know plenty about Benjamin Franklin’s public life, but much less about his everyday habits.

One of the strangest was what he called his "air baths." In a letter from 1768, Franklin explained that he disliked the shock of cold-water baths. Instead, every morning he would get out of bed, remove all his clothes, and sit by the open window of his bedroom for up to an hour while he read, wrote, and worked. He believed that exposing his body to fresh air helped keep him healthy. But what’s interesting is that, despite his dislike of cold water, he still bathed regularly, and later became a fan of warm baths after experiencing them while serving as ambassador to France .

3

He dropped out of school when he was 10

Despite being one of the most intelligent and well-educated men of his time, Benjamin Franklin left school when he was still a child.

Few people know that Franklin attended grammar school for only about two years before leaving formal education at around age 10 because his family could no longer afford to keep him in school. But neither his family’s financial hardship nor his lack of formal education held him back. He educated himself through extensive reading and writing, studied science and philosophy, learned French, Italian, Spanish, and German, and eventually pursued his passion for electricity. As a consequence, the boy who had left school at 10 went on to become one of the best-known intellectuals of his era.

4

He created a musical instrument that impressed Mozart

Along with famous inventions like the lightning rod and bifocal glasses, Franklin created several other inventions that fascinated people of his time.

One of the most unusual was the "glass armonica," a musical instrument he created in 1761 while living in London, England, made of spinning glass bowls that produced tones when touched with wet fingers. The instrument became a sensation across Europe. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was so impressed that he composed Adagio and Rondo for Glass Armonica, Flute, Oboe, Viola, and Cello (K. 617) for it in 1791, and Ludwig van Beethoven also wrote music for the instrument.

5

He became a French fashion icon

Intellectual, politician, writer, inventor: these are all words that describe Benjamin Franklin. But who would have thought he was also a fashion icon?

While serving as a diplomat in France from 1776 to 1785, Franklin embraced some French customs, but he also brought an American style to Paris. At a time when the French elite wore elaborate powdered wigs, Franklin often appeared in a distinctive fur cap , which helped create his image as the charming, rustic American sage. His look became such a sensation that Parisian women began wearing tall hairstyles inspired by his fur cap, a fashion known as the coiffure à la Franklin .

6

He adopted a vegetarian lifestyle

Writing for a newspaper under a female pseudonym wasn’t the only surprising thing Franklin did at age 16.

Around that time, he also decided to become a vegetarian, something quite unusual for a young man in the early 18th century. In his Autobiography , written from 1771 until shortly before his death in 1790, Franklin recalled reading a book by Thomas Tryon that promoted a "vegetable diet" and deciding to try it. He had two good reasons: first, he disliked the idea of killing animals for food, and second, eating less meat would save money for books . But the experiment wasn't long-lasting. About a year later, during a sea voyage, Franklin watched fish being caught and noticed that some of them were eating one another. He later joked that if fish could eat each other, perhaps he could eat fish, too, and he returned to eating meat.

7

He never actually patented an invention

Inventions were a huge part of Benjamin Franklin’s life, but he didn’t make money from them . And it wasn’t because he couldn’t; he simply didn’t want to.

Franklin never patented his inventions because he believed useful ideas should be shared freely for the general good. The lightning rod, bifocals, and Franklin stove could all have brought him money, but he chose not to claim exclusive rights to them. In fact, when Pennsylvania Deputy Governor George Thomas offered him a patent monopoly for his energy-efficient stove in 1744, Franklin politely turned it down.

8

He became a millionaire, but not from inventions

Born into a humble family, Benjamin Franklin went on to become a wealthy man , but not because of his inventions.

As we’ve seen, Franklin never patented his inventions, so he didn’t make money from them. Instead, his intelligence and business sense helped him build a fortune as a printer, publisher, and investor. His Poor Richard’s Almanack, published annually from 1733 to 1758, became hugely popular, selling roughly 10,000 copies a year. Over time, Franklin accumulated enough wealth to retire from active business while he was still relatively young.

9

He made his first invention at 11 years old

Although Franklin left school at 10 , his curiosity and ingenuity led him to create his first documented invention at just 11 .

Franklin loved swimming and was already a strong swimmer as a boy. Always looking for ways to improve, he carved two oval wooden paddles , about 10 inches long and 6 inches wide, with holes in the center for his thumbs. They worked: they literally made him swim faster. However, this wooden invention also left his wrists tired. And that was not all; he also experimented with strapped sandals for his feet , but abandoned them because they were clunky and ineffective. His early inventions, lifelong advocacy for teaching children to swim, and his famous 3.5-mile swim across the River Thames at age 19 helped earn him a posthumous induction into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1968 .

10

He helped create America's first volunteer fire company

Among the many things Benjamin Franklin helped create was America’s first formally organized volunteer fire company.

In the 1730s , rapidly growing Philadelphia was filled with wooden buildings and tightly packed homes. After a major fire at Fishbourne Wharf in 1730 caused thousands of pounds in damage, Franklin used The Pennsylvania Gazette to warn residents about fire hazards, famously writing, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." He believed Philadelphia needed a prepared team, not just bystanders with buckets. So, on December 7, 1736, Franklin and 24 local neighbors and business owners founded the Union Fire Company , widely recognized as America’s first organized volunteer fire company.

1

A renovation project saved thousands of lives on 9/11

On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., killing 189 people. Few people know this part: the death toll could have been much higher. But there was a renovation project underway at the time of the attacks.

The Pentagon’s five-sided structure is divided into five "wedges," and workers had been renovating them one at a time. Flight 77 struck the wedge that had just been completed. Of the 4,500 people who normally worked in that section, only about 800 had moved back in. Without the reinforced construction and the incomplete occupancy, experts believe the casualties would have been catastrophically higher.

2

The Cold War and the hot dog stand

In the middle of the Pentagon’s five-acre center courtyard once stood a modest hot dog stand. According to a Cold War legend (one still retold by official Pentagon tour guides on every public tour), between the 60s and the 80s, Soviet satellite images tracked large groups of high-ranking military officials converging on that small building at the same time every day.

Soviet intelligence reportedly concluded the structure must be the entrance to some underground bunker in America. In reality, all it did was sell lunch. In 2006, the original stand was torn down, and a sandwich shop was built in its place.

3

Its construction began on September 11th, exactly 60 years before the attack

Builders broke ground on the Pentagon on September 11, 1941. That was exactly 60 years to the day before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that would strike the same building.

Construction had been ordered by Army Brigadier General Brehon Somervell, who wanted a permanent headquarters for the Defense Department to replace its then-17 scattered offices across Washington, D.C.

The project was extraordinarily ambitious: plans called for the world’s largest office building to be completed in just 16 months. In the end, the conception, design, and construction of the entire Pentagon building took a total of 15 months.

4

The same person oversaw its construction and the Manhattan Project

Colonel Leslie Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers took charge of Pentagon construction in August 1941. He worked six days a week and drove his team relentlessly, at one point employing more than 15,000 workers around the clock.

When the Pentagon was finished in January 1943, Groves was assigned to lead the Manhattan Project, America’s secret program to build the atomic bomb . His deputy, Captain Robert Furman, followed him into the Manhattan Project as chief of foreign intelligence. Together, the men who built the world’s largest office building went on to produce the weapon that ended World War II.

5

Why is it shaped like that?

The Pentagon’s iconic five-sided shape was the consequence of a geographic accident. The original site selected for the building, near Arlington Cemetery, **happened to be bordered on five sides by roads. **Architects designed the structure to fit those boundaries, producing a pentagonal floor plan. Then President Franklin D. Roosevelt intervened: worried the massive building would obstruct the view of Washington, D.C. from Arlington, he ordered the site moved to its current location along the Potomac River. But the five-sided design had already been drawn up, and nobody changed it.

6

It was the first desegregated building in Virginia

When the Pentagon was designed in 1941, segregation was the law in Virginia. Original plans called for doubled bathroom facilities: separate ones for Black and white employees, as required by Virginia statute. But President Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, prohibiting racial discrimination in federal employment and government contracting.

As a federal building, the Pentagon was exempt from Virginia law. It became the only building in the state where segregation was not enforced. A fully desegregated federal workplace that opened in 1943. The doubled bathrooms were built anyway, as the plans were too far along to revise, but were never used as separately designated spaces.

7

Its construction was surprisingly frugal and incredibly fast

Ground broke on September 11, 1941, and construction finished on January 15, 1943, just 16 months later. More than 15,000 workers were on site around the clock. Wartime office shortages were so severe that employees moved into completed wings before the rest of the building was finished. Steel was too scarce to use extensively, so builders relied almost entirely on reinforced concrete. The 689,000 tons of sand and gravel required came directly from the nearby Potomac River, cutting transportation costs. The project was budgeted at $35 million, but the final bill was $63 million, which would translate to over $900 million in today’s dollars.

8

You can walk between its farthest points in only 7 minutes

The Pentagon is the world’s largest low-rise office building: 6.5 million square feet of space, which is three times the total floor area of the Empire State Building. Each of its five outer walls is 921 feet long. It has 7,754 windows and 17.5 miles of corridors. Approximately 26,000 military and civilian employees report for work there every day.

Despite that scale, the building’s concentric ring design is so efficient that it takes only about seven minutes to walk between its two farthest points.

9

The man who secretly lived inside its walls

During construction, Colonel Groves drove his deputy, Captain Robert Furman, so relentlessly that Furman rarely left the building. To cope, Furman had contractors build him a small, windowless apartment hidden inside the walls of the Army’s Ordnance Division. In this private room, he could sleep and shower without leaving the premises.

When construction ended and personnel dispersed, knowledge of the hidden room was never passed on to building management. Months later, when Furman returned to Washington on Manhattan Project intelligence business, he found the apartment undiscovered and exactly as he’d left it.

For over a year, he would slip back to the Pentagon, pop open a wall panel, spend the night, and emerge in the morning with his suitcase. He was finally caught in 1943 and forced to surrender the keys. It was never disclosed whether the secret apartment was maintained or eventually absorbed back into the official floor plans.

10

It houses over 30 restaurants, including everyone's favorite chains

The Pentagon feeds roughly 26,000 people a day, and its dining options read less like a military headquarters and more like a mall food court. The main Concourse Food Court, which opened in September 2009 and seats 875 people, is the largest of several dining areas.

Confirmed chains currently inside the building include McDonald’s, Five Guys, Subway, Popeyes, Starbucks (multiple locations), Dunkin’ (two locations), Panera Bread, Taco Bell, Panda Express, Baskin-Robbins, Potbelly, Jamba Juice, and Moe’s Southwest Grill, among others. The building also houses a CVS pharmacy, a florist, a jeweler, and a dry cleaner. In the summer of 2024, Potbelly became the first restaurant to open in the center courtyard. Yes, the very spot where the legendary Cold War hot dog stand once stood.

1

Woolworth’s

Woolworth’s was the place to buy everything from school supplies and toys to household goods and candy—or even to grab lunch. The first store opened its doors in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1879. It was a five-and-dime shop, and the chain soon became one of America’s most recognizable retail names, with over 3,000 stores nationwide at its peak. So, why did it disappear?

With the steady rise of suburban shopping centers and large discount stores, Woolworth’s couldn’t keep up and began a slow decline in the 1960s that culminated in 1997, when it closed its final stores for good.

2

A&P

A&P used to be the spot to get everyday groceries. It began as a tea and coffee business in 1859 and later evolved into one of America’s biggest supermarkets with more than 16,000 stores in the country at its peak. But despite pioneering high-volume retailing, A&P couldn’t stick around.

Over the decades, newer competitors entered the market, and grocery shopping became more and more competitive. Walmart, Target, Aldi, Whole Foods—A&P failed to adapt and filed for bankruptcy twice, first in 2010 and again in 2015, and finally shut down in November 2015.

3

Blockbuster

Blockbuster was the go-to for movie rentals . It dominated the market with 9,100 stores worldwide by 2004, about $6 billion in revenue, and thousands of movies to choose from—it was hard to imagine Blockbuster ever falling, but it did.

The rapid advancement of technology hit Blockbuster hard, with newer options like DVD-by-mail services, Redbox kiosks, and the final blow: streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and more. All Blockbuster corporate-owned stores closed by January 2014; however, you can still visit one holdout location in Bend, Oregon.

4

Montgomery Ward

Long before Amazon, consumers could buy almost anything from Montgomery Ward from the comfort of their homes , and the company would ship it directly to them. It felt like online shopping before the internet. So why did it vanish?

To adapt to newer shopping habits, Montgomery Ward opened physical stores and started competing with brands like Sears; but once suburban malls and discount stores became widespread in the 1980s, Montgomery Ward couldn’t keep pace and eventually filed for bankruptcy in 1997 and again in 2001.

5

Circuit City

Circuit City started in 1949 and quickly became the source for TVs, stereos, VCRs, video games, and just about every kind of electronics , especially during the 1980s. The company continued growing by the early 2000s, expanding to more than 600 stores, though one controversial decision made it trip and fall.

Circuit City was already struggling to compete with Best Buy and Walmart. And in 2007, it replaced its commissioned sales staff with low-paid hourly workers, damaging customer service—often considered one of Circuit City’s biggest strategic mistakes. By March 2009, the chain was gone.

6

Caldor

There was a time when one trip to Caldor could cover almost everything on your shopping list. Founded in 1951, it became a major one-stop discount department store . By the 1990s, it had grown to more than 150 stores across New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, but in 1995 it filed for bankruptcy. What happened in between?

Big box stores like Walmart and Target were expanding rapidly, and Caldor simply fell behind as people moved toward newer retail formats that combined department stores and supermarkets. Plus, the company took on a lot of debt in 1991, which only made things worse. Caldor finally closed for good in 1999.

7

Borders

Borders is a reminder of a time when buying a book was an experience, rather than just clicking a few buttons online. It opened in 1971 and set itself apart from other modern bookstores. At Borders, you could spend an entire afternoon browsing not just books, but music and DVDs or even grabbing a coffee.

Around 2003–2004, Borders had more than 1,200 stores worldwide , but it failed to adapt to an inevitable growing trend: online book sales. Amazon eventually took over, and Borders couldn’t stay in the game, closing its final location in September 2011.

8

G.C. Murphy

Much like Woolworth’s, G.C. Murphy was a five-and-dime store that sold a little bit of everything and had lunch counters or snack bars where people would hang out. The company opened in 1906, and it operated more than 500 stores by 1976.

But once the traditional five-and-dime model came under pressure from discount giants, G.C. Murphy was forced to adapt. The chain did make some efforts and experimented with bigger stores and different formats, but it wasn’t enough, and G.C. Murphy filed for bankruptcy in 1985.

9

Zayre

Zayre entered the market in 1956 as a classic discount department store that looked more like a warehouse . It was a no-frills, self-service shopping experience with massive stores, wide-open interiors, and exposed ceilings where you could find lots of everyday items like clothing, household goods, or appliances at low prices.

While it was pretty successful, especially across the Northeast and Midwest, Zayre struggled to keep up with giants like Target. It tried to reinvent itself by founding TJ Maxx in 1977, but eventually sold the remaining Zayre stores to Ames in 1988, and the Zayre name vanished by 1990.

10

Service Merchandise

Service Merchandise was founded in 1934 and, unlike typical retail stores, it introduced a strange new concept called the " catalog showroom " in 1960, where display floors showcased single working samples of products, and the actual inventory was stored in an adjacent backroom warehouse. Customers would look at a catalog, place an order, and an employee would bring it to them.

The concept proved successful, and Service Merchandise operated more than 400 showrooms by the mid-1990s. But Service Merchandise’s model meant longer waiting times, and traditional discount stores began offering a faster and easier shopping experience. The company tried to modernize by introducing electronic inventory systems, but it didn’t work out. By 2002, Service Merchandise was gone.