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Did Benjamin Franklin really write an essay about farting?
VERDICTTRUE
Yes. At Passy, after May 1780, he mocked a Brussels academy prize question by proposing a better one: find a drug, mixed into food, that makes our wind smell like perfume. He printed it on his own press. His heading was “To the Royal Academy of *****”; the title “Fart Proudly” is a later nickname. It ends with “scarcely worth a F A R T-H I N G.”
The receipts
- Benjamin Franklin to the Royal Academy of Brussels, [after 19 May 1780], Founders Online, National Archives
The comedy version
The untold story of Benjamin Franklin, who won the Revolution with an essay about wind.
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