well, i'll stop i'll start with benjamin franklin who's everybody's popular grandfather figure even in the hamilton play the one thing that they left out of the play was benjamin franklin because the play right said if you let him and he'll take over everything but worldwide probably are best known founding father was benjamin franklin. he was the inventor. he was the guy with the wheelbarrow gathering up scraps of garbage to make soap. he was writing in autobiography that generations of students had to read but he was also sort of the quintessential new american so i i've studied him a lot and what i've learned about him for one thing is that he was totally honest and very frugal but every once in a while, he could be very naive. for example when he was finishing up as our ambassador to france and had put together the french alliance with the king when he was coming home. he got the traditional gift that the french king gave to diplomats when they were going home, which was often a snuff box. the country was the french were addicted to grinding up tobacco and sniffing on it and you've

well, i'll stop i'll start with benjamin franklin who's everybody's popular grandfather figure even in the hamilton play the one thing that they left out of the play was benjamin franklin because the play right said if you let him and he'll take over everything but worldwide probably are best known founding father was benjamin franklin. he was the inventor. he was the guy with the wheelbarrow gathering up scraps of garbage to make soap. he was writing in autobiography that generations of students had to read but he was also sort of the quintessential new american so i i've studied him a lot and what i've learned about him for one thing is that he was totally honest and very frugal but every once in a while, he could be very naive. for example when he was finishing up as our ambassador to france and had put together the french alliance with the king when he was coming home. he got the traditional gift that the french king gave to diplomats when they were going home, which was often a snuff box. the country was the french were addicted to grinding up tobacco and sniffing on it and you've

the lightning rod appeared in our country a little earlier than it was officially invented by benjamin franklin 1752. for three days, the brigade of vladimir faifer could not start work, the weather did not allow, the wind raised impressive waves, sometimes storms on lake baikal bush

if we were there, for example, if we were americans, we could, without any distance, look at benjamin franklin there and maybe somehow better understand his figure and greatness but if at the same time we are, for example, residents of a reservation and belong to a tribe there, i don't know, the mohawks or siyu or some other large indian tribes, then it is possible that we have a third point of view on benjamin franklin and this is this moment , therefore, of course, i completely agree with you, but we do not really know what the further development of even ukraine will be and what will be understood by the word ukraine, to what extent will it coincide with those axes of ukraine that were in the fathers of the founders of the ukrainian state, but i still do not consider leonid kravchuk to be the founding father of this state, it was, after all, a completely different group. it was the people's council and its leaders in the verkhovna rada of the first convocation . leonid makarovich's role was reduced to the fact that he simply made the right decision, they came to him, they took advantage of

switzerland became independent the holy roman empire broke up into 300 dwarf states may 23, 1785 benjamin franklin founding fathers the united states and also a famous physicist wrote to his friend that he had invented bifacial glasses. they made it possible to see well the subject who has prisbyopia, that is, nearsightedness farsightedness at the same time franklin himself suffered from it and he was tired of carrying two pairs of glasses with him all the time. he cut 4 lenses in half for nearsightedness and for farsightedness and placed the halves in one frame from above for distance from below for reading, then the lenses were no longer cut. they began to be made from a single piece of glass with different diopters, and the term bifocal lenses was coined half a century later by a british engineer. johnsack. hawkins inventor of trifal lenses may 23, 19. 1938 in rotterdam was the leader of the organization of ukrainian nationalists , yevhen konovalets, was killed. he actively collaborated with the third reich and twice met with hitler . the soviet court. he was sentenced to death in absentia for

switzerland became independent the holy roman empire collapsed on 300 dwarf states may 23, 1785 benjamin frankline of the founding fathers of the united states and a well -known physicist, wrote to his friend that he had invented bifocal glasses. they made it possible to see well the topic of those who have presbyopia, that is, nearsightedness and farsightedness at the same time franklin himself suffered from it and he was tired of carrying two pairs of glasses with him all the time. he cut four lenses in half for nearsightedness and for farsightedness and placed the halves in one frame from above for distance from below for reading, then the lenses were no longer cut. them began to be made from a single piece of glass with different diopters, and the term bifocal lenses itself was coined half a century later by a british engineer, jonasak. hawkins, inventor of three focal lenses may 23, 19. twenty-eighth year in rotterdam , the leader of the organization of ukrainian nationalists yevhen konovalets was killed. he actively collaborated with the third reich and twice met with hitler in the soviet c

he went on to say of second rank or benjamin franklin. alexander hamilton andrew jackson of second rank so this is the way theodore roosevelt understood ulysses s grant in 1900 i'm so pleased that in 2022. we are restoring him to his rightful place as my editor said when we talked about doing a grant biography don't you think grants do for an upgrade? yes, he is. thank you very much. dr. white you are as good a storyteller in person as you are when you read the book. president grant comes alive both in the challenges and in the opportunities today we gather as part of our understanding of public memory the capital historical society is dedicated. to ensuring that our public memory is presented in a way to inspire inform patriotism? mr. blanton, thank you for your work. thank you for your creation and dedication to recreate this statue to the glory it belongs. we thank senator blunt for sponsoring us to be here for sponsoring the legislation. we thank senator brown. congresswoman ann wagner and we thank each of you. this event would not be

as benjamin franklin said at the time of our revolution we will hang together or we will hang alone. and that has to be the mantra that we take to our allies into the the american people. one last point. we need to bring together this body and our congress and the bipartisan way the three of us are doing today. this issue is way above partisan politics and it's important to our future as a nation. the american people understandably are focused on inflation which is a serious challenge. they are fatigued and tired of covid which is not only irksome but threatening. our job is to make them aware of the threat that is supposed by putin's russia. it is not the russian people's russia no idea it's happening. president zelenskyy who were jewish was a nazi that's what they've been told. we visited ukraine. not long before the invasion where the colleagues in the bipartisan trip said to president zelenskyy are you fearful about a russian invasion it was january of this year. and he said the russian invasion began in 2014. the russian invasion has been ongoing and has killed 14000 of our peop

it is correctly important that we depend upon the transcended to help us in our labors as benjamin franklinted 127 psalm verse one constitutional unless the lord builds the house they labor in vain. if we do not have the help in dealing with the challenges that we face, we are laboring in vain. trey: i don't know why it is always wanting to save the toughest questions for you. i guess you're a man of wisdom and i have trust and confidence in your wisdom. i very asked you previously why bad things happen to good people. i'm going to ask you another tough question. what is the key to finding unity and purpose. everyone says they want to protect children, everyone says that, how do we find unity and purpose despite whatever differences may exist and other realms. >> jesus before he ascended into heaven he. a prayer in john chapter 17. he said in that prayer the key petition in that prayer was father make them one and he was talking about believers, make them one as we are one. there was something about being connected in a relationship with someone that you love that can bring unity. we have a

and one of them survives because she wrote it to benjamin franklin's daughter. sally franklin bates. and otherwise, there is no papers left of her that anybody knows of our right now. so the book is a biography and it's also a sort of history of this concept of how women and gender relate to the constitution. and in part, that's because, there is a lot of wonderful women's histories that have used different groups of women to try and make that argument. but she really allows us the opportunity to see that argument overtime, through her own life. and so for me, that was just a nice thing, she's one 70 49, she doesn't 1811. her lifespan almost perfectly maps on to this space of expanding ideas about political representation and then the abrupt construction and exclusion that happens in the 19th century. so her lifespan, even if she was famous, she has a good lifespan for the story. she's, i argue she's a significant player in creating the story in the united states. but also she gives an opportunity, i think for me, and i think about your book, vanguard, to revisi

and so they're in the library of congress and one of them survives because she wrote it to benjamin franklin's daughter sally franklin beech. and otherwise, there's there's no papers left of her that anybody knows about right now. so yeah, the book is a biography and it's also a sort of history of this concept of how women and gender related to the constitution and and in part that's because that's a you know, it's a there's a lot of wonderful women's history that have used different groups of women to try and make that argument but she really allows us the opportunity to to see that argument over time through her own. life and so for me that was just a nice thing. she's born in 1749. she dies in 1811 her lifespan almost perfectly maps on to this this space of expanding ideas about political representation and then the abrupt constriction and exclusion that happens in the 19th century. so her lifespan, you know, even if you were famous she has a good lifespan for the story. she's i argue. she's a significant player in creating this story in the united states, but also she gives us an opportuni

and at one point it was going to be the bird of the united states, that's what benjamin franklin, one of our leaders suggested, but instead we went with the ball. legal and the turkey standing there didn't move and he leans over and says, it's a sign from all of, my brother and we got back to the house and i said, do you want to eat? he said yes. and i said, we are going to have lunch. and the relief on the foreign ministers facing the massacre's face was palpable. the reason i tell you that is the ranch was a great place to get to know leaders and establish a bond with them, as was camp david. camp david was initially call shangri-la law. which means heavenly place. which it is. it is tucked in the mountains. thankfully it is only a 25 minute helicopter right from the south lawn. which means it is extremely accessible. so lauren and i went there a lot, as often as we possibly could. you will hear from one of the base commanders at camp david, the whole deal is, it's a military base, and they've got a lot of other fit military functions and duties, but when the president is there, it

know really becomes a pillar of his i like to think of him in a lot of respects as like to what benjamin franklin was and sort of mid-century 1700s philadelphia for in a lot of ways especially in the black community. is that in and more and allow the responsibilities that he's taking on as well. it really is a steward and a pillar of the philadelphia a black philadelphia community. and i'm glad that you mentioned before for fortin women because that was i mean even into the era even into the far 19th century where we have charlotte horton his granddaughter. so a lot of a lot of important people who did amazing things. so going forward. there's what else are we hoping to discover about james fortin about black revolutionary war soldiers about how what else do we looking to discover and how will that be brought to life here at the museum? um going forward we are working diligently on an upcoming something that we're working on an exhibition on the fortin family it it's just kind it's just amazing how much i've been scaffold in the past few years since i've been here from discovery cards from fortin

let's say your george washington or benjamin franklin or john adams or any number of the other people that i profile in this book. what makes you take the step? you if you want to understand what it was like to be alive and i'll just say one thing. so historians do two things one is they explained? how how and why what happened happened, but i think another thing that they do released i try to do is to put readers and my students back at a moment in time when the future is unknown. and they have to make these decisions. so what was it like to be george washington? what was it like to be thomas hutchinson? who was a loyalist? what's it like then so to put my readers in that world where you don't know how it's going to turn out. you know that this is a big decision and if you jump off the end, you know, you might wind up a trader and hang or there's actually the penalty for treason whether it's much worse than that. you don't know how it's going to turn in but you still have to make a decision because this is this is how sort of history intersects the present. none of us know. what tomo

actually adams was one of it was kind of an all-star lineup of diplomats when jefferson got there benjamin franklin and john adams were already there as ambassadors as ministers to france too. so he joined them and he they had you know, adams and jefferson had worked together in the continental continental congress. they bonded even more and and he with her whole family there in paris. he visited jefferson visited adams in england and they toured some of those english gardens together, so they were very close friends. they broke apart bitterly, you know over the politics of the 1790s and then in their retirement, they rekindled the correspondence. they did not talk about slavery almost never in in the letters and i suspect it was because atoms didn't bring it up because he knew this was a painful subject. it was one that jefferson didn't have a good answer for he didn't like confrontation jefferson didn't he was a wonderful. he's a magnificent letter writer. they're almost like poetry and he was a wonderful conversation list, but he was certainly shy away from one-on-one confrontation on so adams i

in 1810, with the assistance of a young, white lawyer named benjamin franklin, and enterprising young printer named harry whitney, he published his life story until the title of the blind, african slave, or members of boyrereau brinch, nick named jeffrey brace. almost 190 years later, i picked up, as parry moss just said, a fragile copy of the blind african slave, and the special collection at the versatility of vermont. i was riveted. i had been studying slave narratives for over a decade and had not -- this extraordinary book. why, i wondered? the more's minds life people who remembered africa are exceedingly rare. as our first person accounts of black soldiers in the american resolution. love the autobiographical narratives in english recording the experience of enslaved people before 1810, only one, -- is longer than jeffrey brace's. how can we account for the disappearance of the blind african slave? in the past 25 years, i've traveled far and wide in an attempt to learn more about jeffrey brace and his world. i velour come to believe that his story of a central truths about amer

we think about information warfare as an internet invention, but in fact benjamin franklin was really good at information warfare cranked out fake news literally fake news articles from his paris basement. it's different today. primarily. i would say in three ways. number one is speed. everything's moving faster. now the speed of data the speed of insight the speed of decision. so espionage has to keep pace with what decision makers need to know and when they need to know it, so everything is accelerating today. that's a really hard challenge. i think for intelligence agencies, right? the second is scale. so if we think about i have a chapter in the book about traders and counterintelligence, you know, it used to take years for people to smuggle documents out in their pants and garbage bags and all sorts of crazy ways to to try to betray their country, right but now traders can download documents millions of documents in a matter of minutes or hours or months. so this scale of espionage and particularly counterintelligence challenges is completely different and i see the third key dif

in 1810 with the assistance of a young white lawyer named benjamin franklin prentice and an enterprising young printer named harry whitney. he published his life story under the title the blind african slave or memoirs a bureau branch nicknamed jeffrey brace. almost 190 years later. i picked up as perry monsters said a fragile copy of the blind african slave in the special collections room at the university of vermont library, and i was riveted. i'd been studying slave narratives for over a decade and had not encountered a single mention of this extraordinary book. why i wondered memoirs by enslaved people who remembered africa are exceedingly rare. as our first person accounts a black soldiers in the american revolution of the autobiographical narratives in english recording the experiences of enslaved people before 1810. only one alluda. equiano's is longer than jeffrey braces. how can we account for the disappearance of the blind african slave? in the past 25 years, i've traveled far and wide and an attempt to learn more about jeffrey brace and his world. i've come to believe that his

historians we get nicolas cage right we get benjamin franklin gates and that's all fine and good because who doesn't love national treasure national treasure, too, but i'd happen to see that it was available on netflix one day tweeted out. hey, we should all watch this. people say okay. let's do it. you'll be in charge. great, so we do and it's a big night. it's a lot of fun and it was a lot of fun, right we get done. i think oh we should maybe do this again sometime. well next week jason. okay, so we do and we end up doing lincoln and then we do a marie antoinette the next week and then we do cocoa and we do trading places and then we are off to the races. so after about five weeks we were just rolling with these movies. we've been watching now for almost four years and that's how it gets started. great. i mean because i like i said, i i was one of those people that stumbled on it and and i don't remember i don't really remember exactly what film it was, but i remember having such a good time with it and making sure that i had started my netflix right at eight o'clock, so i wasn't like