Although the private diary of Benjamin Franklin had been kept secret for two hundred years by The American Philosophical Society in accordance with directions in the great man's will, its quiet release in 1990 attracted little interest except amongst scholars of American History.
Amongst its contents, however, is a revelation of how astrology played a significant part in the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the commencement of the War of Independence.
Franklin was born under the sign of Capricorn, in 1706. He became a printer, author, publisher, poet, gentleman scientist, and was early in the field of understanding and experimenting with the newly discovered phenomenon known as electricity.
He later secured an alliance with France which assured the success of the War of Independence and subsequently became the US ambassador to France.
Although as a scientist he did not believe in astrology, he nevertheless “embraced” it as a device to sway wavering members of the Continental Congress into supporting independence.
His introduction to astronomy began when he visited France during 1767 and was for some time a house guest of French Comet hunter Charles Messier.
He and Charles had become known to each other as two of the few foreigners admitted as members of the British Royal Society, and Franklin was introduced by Messier to the technique of Comet hunting during his stay.
However, 1767 was a year in which Messier did not discover any Comets and this was Franklin's fault, as he had brought with him on his travels a few barrels of overproof Bourbon, which he had told Messier was an American wine named in honour of the French Monarchy.
Messier took to this new “wine” with gusto but unfortunately, for both his Comet hunting evenings and his mornings after, started drinking the stuff in “wine quantities” with results familiar to so many Americans – and Australians for that matter!
Franklin's reputation as a scientist had preceded his arrival and he was granted an audience with King Louis XV, who expressed a desire to see a replay of Franklin's famous experiment with a kite, a key, and lightning.
Older and wiser, since the sudden demise in mid experiment of a few scientific emulators, Franklin proceeded with caution and made preparations in the gardens of Fontainebleau.
When the appropriate storm turned up, so did the king, under the shelter of a transportable pavilion, and all went well - more or less. Having received a few mild jolts from his home-made batteries, Franklin wisely tethered his kite to a bronze statue of Mercury, and after a relatively short time the lightning struck at the highest point - the kite, and the key glowed red for a minute or so.
The only real hitch was caused by the fact that Franklin had fabricated the box kite out of a redundant pair of pantaloons formerly belonging to Madame Du Barry, Courtesan extraordinaire and contract mistress to the rich and fatuous, while the key happened to be one of the many spare keys to her chastity belt.
How Franklin had come by these items has never been satisfactorily explained, and certainly not in his secret diary.
An inadvertent consequence however was that the King clearly appeared to have recognised both items, to the great consternation of the Queen, but fortunately Franklin, the diplomat by nature, explained that they had been purchased by him from the Paris branch of Vinnies and that as the King, a talented amateur clockmaker and tinkerer, had given valuable advice on the design and construction of the kite, he had certainly seen both items during the construction phase.
Certainly the most important consequence was that Franklin presented the key to Messier as a memento of the great occasion, and the delighted astronomer presented him with a spare 90 x 120 refractor in return, which Franklin brought back to America where he searched for Comets without success and totally missed an eclipse of the Moon.
The telescope came in handy some years later, when, during the first meetings of the Continental Congress, Franklin the Astronomer conveniently became Franklin the astrologer after cobbling together a scheme with compatriot and fellow intellectual Thomas Jefferson.
It seems that contrary to patriotic myth-making by generations of historians, a significant number of the delegates were superstitious country bumpkin types and needed powerful persuasion to literally stick their necks out and start a War of Independence.
Now King George III was a Gemini, and using his telescope as a stage prop, Franklin creatively explained to the delegates that he had been informed by Messier that his Comet C/1773 TI Messier had appeared in Gemini and proceeded to eclipse both Castor and Pollux.
Clearly, he said, the Comet represented the new – America - which eclipsed the old - the King and his government - so that heaven had declared itself on the side of the Colonists.
The fact that Franklin got himself a job as Ambassador in Paris for the duration of the war suggests that his faith in his astrology was a little lukewarm, even with the supporting evidence that he, a Capricorn, and Jefferson, an Aries were both intellectual and zodiacal soul mates. Thus was the USA borne of astrology, where for many, it still rules.