Benjamin Franklin Was Writing Fake News at Age 16 and Everyone Thought It Was Real

 In 1722 readers of the New England Courant in Boston were captivated by a series of witty letters written by a widow named Mrs. Silence Dogood.

She wrote about politics, religion, education, and the absurdities of colonial society with a sharp and funny voice that kept readers coming back. She was charming. She seemed wise. She was completely fictional.

The letters were written by Benjamin Franklin. He was 16 years old.

How It Happened

Franklin was working as an apprentice at his brother James's printing shop, which published the New England Courant. He wanted to write for the paper. His brother refused. Benjamin was too young and James was not interested in giving his little brother a platform.

So Benjamin slid the letters under the print shop door at night pretending they came from someone else.

He created an entire character. Silence Dogood was a middle-aged widow with opinions about everything. She wrote about the hypocrisy of the wealthy. She criticized Harvard as a place that produced more pompous graduates than educated ones. She advocated for women's rights in terms that were progressive for the era.

Readers adored her. They wrote in asking to meet her or to court her. The newspaper's readership grew because of her letters.

When Franklin eventually revealed that he was the author his brother was furious. The deception had worked completely for months.

Why This Matters

The Silence Dogood letters are worth knowing about for several reasons.

They show something about Franklin that gets lost in the founding father mythology. He was not just a statesman and inventor. He was a writer who understood how to create a voice, build a persona, and shape public opinion. Those skills served him throughout his life in ways that went well beyond the letters of a fictional widow.

They also demonstrate something that has not changed in three hundred years. A compelling voice with something interesting to say will find an audience. Franklin did not need a famous name or an official platform. He created a character and let her speak. The readers responded to the quality of the ideas regardless of who was presenting them.

The oldest surviving example of American political commentary written by a founding father is a series of fake letters from a fictional middle-aged widow written by a 16 year old who was not allowed to publish under his own name.

History is full of surprises.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

Radium Was Sold as a Health Product and It Killed the People Who Trusted It

 When Marie Curie discovered radium in 1898 the world was fascinated.

Here was a substance that glowed. That produced energy seemingly from nothing. That was unlike anything science had ever described before. The early 20th century did not yet understand the danger. What it understood was the wonder.

And where there is wonder, there are people ready to sell it.

What They Sold

Within years of radium's discovery consumer products containing radium were appearing on the market with claims that the element's energy could improve health, restore vitality, cure disease, and enhance beauty.

Radithor was a bottled water product containing dissolved radium that was marketed as a cure for impotence and general vitality. Wealthy consumers drank it regularly. One prominent socialite and athlete named Eben Byers consumed over 1,400 bottles before doctors noticed his jaw was literally falling off his skull. He died in 1932. A Wall Street Journal headline about his case read The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Fell Off.

Radium face cream was sold with promises that the radioactive glow would translate into a glowing complexion. Radium toothpaste was marketed because it made teeth glow in the dark which was presented as evidence of its cleansing power. Radium chocolate was sold in Germany. Radium suppositories existed.

These products were not fringe items sold by obvious charlatans. They were mainstream consumer goods sold in reputable stores and endorsed in respectable publications.

The Radium Girls

The most documented human cost of radium's early misuse falls on a group of young women who painted watch dials at the United States Radium Corporation in New Jersey starting in the 1910s.

The dial painters were instructed to point their paintbrushes with their lips to get a fine tip. They ingested radium every day at work. Supervisors assured them the substance was harmless. Some workers painted their fingernails and teeth with it as a joke because it glowed in the dark.

Years later their bones were disintegrating. Their jaws were developing necrosis. They were dying of cancers that contemporary medicine could barely explain.

The women fought back. Despite being sick and despite company lawyers working against them they pursued legal action. Their cases established that companies could be held liable for exposing workers to hazardous conditions and helped lay the groundwork for modern workplace safety law.

Their sacrifice is documented. Their names should be known. Grace Fryer. Edna Hussman. Katherine Schaub. Albina Larice. Quinta McDonald.

They are the reason American workers have some of the workplace protections they have today.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.

How to Build a Free Digital Archive of Your Life That Will Outlast Everything You Own

 Most people think that preserving their history requires money. Special equipment. Technical knowledge. A plan they will get to someday when things are less busy.

None of that is true.

You can build a free permanent digital archive of your life right now using tools that already exist, that cost nothing, and that require no technical skill beyond knowing how to use a phone.

Here is exactly how to do it.

Step One: Create Your Archive Home Base on the Internet Archive

Go to archive.org and create a free account. This is your foundation.

The Internet Archive is a nonprofit organization that has been preserving digital content since 1996. It is funded by donations and has a mission to provide universal access to all knowledge. Content uploaded to the Internet Archive is preserved permanently and is accessible to anyone in the world including your descendants a hundred years from now.

Once you have an account you can upload photographs, documents, audio recordings, video files, and written text directly to your own collection. Everything you upload gets its own permanent URL that will not change or expire.

This is the most important step. Everything else builds on it.

Step Two: Start Uploading the Most Important Things First

Do not try to do everything at once. Start with the things that are most at risk of being lost.

The oldest photographs in your possession. The ones of family members who are no longer living. The ones where you might be the last person who knows whose faces are in the image.

Scan them with your phone using a free app like Microsoft Lens or Adobe Scan. Upload them to your Internet Archive collection. Label each one with the names of the people in it, the date if you know it, and the location.

Old documents are next. Birth certificates. Marriage certificates. Letters. Military records. Diplomas. Anything on paper that represents an important moment in a family history.

Step Three: Record Yourself

This is the step most people skip and it is one of the most valuable things you can do.

Open the voice memo app on your phone and record yourself talking for ten or fifteen minutes. Tell the story of how you grew up. Describe your parents. Talk about the neighborhood you lived in as a child. Tell a story you have told a hundred times before.

Do not worry about how you sound. Do not prepare a script. Just talk honestly. Future generations will treasure the sound of your voice talking about your own life far more than any polished production.

Upload the recording to your Internet Archive collection. Label it with your name and the date.

Then do it again next week. And the week after that. Over time you will build something extraordinary.

Step Four: Write It Down

You do not have to write a book. A few paragraphs a week adds up to something remarkable over months and years.

Write about what is happening in your life right now. Where you live. What you do. What the world looks like from where you stand in 2026. What you are worried about and what you hope for.

Create a free blog on Blogger at blogger.com, WordPress at wordpress.com, or any other free blogging platform. Write there regularly. Everything you publish is indexed by search engines, archived by the Wayback Machine, and accessible to anyone who goes looking for it.

You can also upload written documents directly to the Internet Archive alongside your photographs and recordings.

Step Five: Tell Your Family What You Are Building

The archive you are building is for them. Tell them it exists. Tell them where to find it. Show your children or grandchildren how to access it.

Invite other family members to contribute. Ask your parents or grandparents if they would let you help them record their own memories and add them to the archive. A family history archive built collaboratively across multiple generations is the most complete and durable version of this project.

What You Are Actually Building

Every photograph you upload with a name attached is a piece of your family that will not be lost. Every voice recording is a gift to people who will miss you. Every written account of your life is a primary historical document that future generations will be grateful existed.

The Irish monks we talked about in an earlier post copied ancient texts by hand in remote island monasteries because they understood that knowledge does not survive without effort. You have better tools than they did. You have the Internet Archive and a smartphone and a free afternoon.

The only question is whether you decide your life is worth preserving.

It is. Start today.

Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.