I am referring, of course to Ben Franklin.

Andy Kaufman has nothing on post-death humor.

Specifically, when I blamed Ben Franklin for creating Daylight Saving Time, I neglected to do my research.

It turns out that Ben Franklin’s suggestion was satire:

During his time as an American envoy to France, Benjamin Franklin, publisher of the old English proverb, “Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”, anonymously published a letter suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight. This 1784 satire proposed taxing shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise. Franklin did not propose DST; like ancient Rome, 18th-century Europe did not keep precise schedules. However, this soon changed as rail and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklin’s day.

I must remember: Google before shooting off my mouth.

It appears that I am not a hoopy frood who knows where my towel is.