Daylight Saving Time
Most of us either love or loathe Daylight Savings, depending on whether we’re gaining or losing an hour of sleep. Turns out, we don’t need to direct our anger at Ben Franklin.
While George Vernon Hudson is mostly credited for proposing the idea of turning back the clocks in 1895, plenty of people still think he stole the idea of Ben Franklin – who wrote a satire piece titled “Daylight Saving” in Journal de Paris 100 years earlier.
In the hilarious (by 1700’s standards) piece, Franklin takes credit for discovering that the sun begins shining from the moment it rises. As the locals slept until noon, they would never know. He also suggested they would save tons of money on candles if they woke up with the sun and used natural, as opposed to artificial, light. Next time you wake up to complete darkness due to Daylight Savings… blame George Vernon Hudson, not Franklin!
