Benjamin Franklin House - the world's only surviving residence of one of the founding fathers of the United States. The great politician, scientist, diplomat and inventor lived here for sixteen years.

Franklin was born in 1706 in the family of the British soap-boiler, emigrated to America. All the education of the future scientist was limited to two classes of school. But he was lucky: in twelve years he went into the service of his older brother, printers and acquired a profession related to books. Self-made Franklin a different person: the age of fifteen, he wrote under the pseudonym of popular articles in the newspaper brother, twenty-one year founded his own printing house, twenty-three - a newspaper in twenty-five - the first public library in America.

As a scientist, he proved the electrical nature of lightning, and put forward the idea of ​​an electric motor. As the inventor - invented the lightning rod, the glass harmonica, bifocals, the electric fuse. As a politician and philosopher has achieved the inclusion in the Constitution of the United States the idea of ​​inalienable human rights to life, liberty and property.

Franklin arrived in London in 1757 as a representative of Pennsylvania - then still a British colony. Wife Deborah was afraid to cross the ocean, an American settled in Craven Street, 36 at the widowed landlady Margaret Stevenson. With her and her daughter Polly, they became friends for life. Franklin biographer Carl Van Doren wrote that the tenant was the head of the family is living in comfort and love.

Missy Franklin in the UK was extremely important for the American colonies. The messenger appeared in the British press and Parliament against the unfair taxation of the colonists, warned public opinion about the possibility of conflict. Do not leave it and research: in a house on Craven Street studied magnetism and the mechanism of occurrence of a cold.

The building is still standing in almost its original form: it is all the same central staircase, wall panels, stoves and window shutters. Historic furniture, however, survived. Her lack of originality redeemed tours: actress, dressed in a dress of the XVIII century (it depicts the daughter of the hostess Polly), tells the story of Franklin's narrative is accompanied by an impressive soundtrack and videos on giant screens.

In the basement of the building today has made an unexpected discovery: a set of human bones. It is believed that there was a dissecting-law Margaret Stevenson, a young anatomist William Hewson. It is possible that Franklin, who was interested in absolutely everything, and he worked here.