"Who started ""Poor Richard's Almanac"" in 1732, helped draw up the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution and invented the lightning conductor?"
Poor Richard's Almanack as Noah Webster were inspired by the almanac, and it went on to influence other publications of this type such as "The Old Farmer's Almanac". Numerous farmer's almanacs trace their format and tradition to "Poor Richard's Almanack;" the Old Farmer's Almanac, for instance, has included a picture of Franklin on its cover since 1851. The prefaces to the "Almanack" are also reprinted in: Poor Richard's Almanack Poor Richard's Almanack (sometimes "Almanac") was a yearly almanac published by Benjamin Franklin, who adopted the pseudonym of "Poor Richard" or "Richard Saunders" for this purpose. The publication appeared continually from 1732 to 1758.
Poor Richard's Almanack Franklin "stole", not borrowed, the name of Richard Saunders from the deceased astrologer-doctor. Franklin also "borrowed—apparently without asking—and adapted the title of an almanac his brother James Franklin was publishing at Newport: "Poor Robin's Almanack" (itself appropriated from a seventeenth-century almanac published under the same title in London)". Louis XVI of France gave a ship to John Paul Jones who renamed her after the "Almanack's" author—"Bonhomme Richard", or "Good man Richard" (the first of several US warships so named). Napoleon Bonaparte considered the "Almanack" significant enough to translate it into Italian, along with the Pennsylvania State Constitution (which Franklin helped