Franklin

On his birthday, I present, from History.com, surprising facts about Benjamin Franklin.

He only had two years of formal education.

The man considered the most brilliant American of his age rarely saw the inside of a classroom. Franklin spent just two years attending Boston Latin School and a private academy before joining the family candle and soap-making business. By age 12, he was serving as an indentured apprentice at a printing shop owned by his brother, James. Young Benjamin made up for his lack of schooling by spending what little money he earned on books, often going without food to afford new volumes. He also honed his composition skills by reading essays and articles and then rewriting them from memory. Despite being almost entirely self-taught, Franklin later helped found the school that became the University of Pennsylvania and received honorary degrees from Harvard, Yale, the College of William and Mary, the University of St. Andrews and Oxford.

Franklin became a hit writer as a teenager.

After his brother James founded a weekly newspaper called the New England Courant in the 1720s, a 16-year-old Franklin began secretly submitting essays and commentary as “Silence Dogood,” a fictitious widow who offered homespun musings on everything from fashion and marriage to women’s rights and religion. The letters were hugely popular, and Mrs. Dogood soon received several marriage proposals from eligible bachelors in Boston. Franklin penned 14 Dogood essays before unmasking himself as their author, much to his jealous brother’s chagrin. Sick of the toil and beatings he endured as James’ apprentice, the teenaged sensation then fled Boston the following year and settled in Philadelphia, the city that would remain his adopted hometown for the rest of his life.

He spent half his life in unofficial retirement.

Franklin arrived in Philadelphia in 1723 practically penniless, but over the next two decades he became enormously wealthy as a print shop owner, land speculator and publisher of the popular “Poor Richard’s Almanack.” By 1748, the 42-year-old was rich enough to hang up his printer’s apron and become a “gentleman of leisure.” Franklin’s retirement allowed him to spend his remaining 42 years studying science and devising inventions such as the lightning rod, bifocal glasses and a more efficient heating stove. It also gave him the freedom to devote himself to public service. Despite never running for elected office, he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, diplomat and ambassador to France and Sweden, the first postmaster general and the president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania.

Franklin designed a musical instrument used by Mozart and Beethoven.

Among Franklin’s more unusual inventions is his “glass armonica,” an instrument designed to replicate the otherworldly sound that a wet finger makes when rubbed along the rim of a glass. He made his first prototype in 1761 by having a London glassmaker build him 37 glass orbs of different sizes and pitches, which he then mounted on a spindle controlled by a foot pedal. To play the instrument, the user would simply wet their fingers, rotate the apparatus and then touch the glass pieces to create individual tones or melodies. The armonica would go on to amass a considerable following during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Thousands were manufactured, and the likes of Mozart, Beethoven and Strauss all composed music for it. Franklin would later write that “Of all my inventions, the glass armonica has given me the greatest personal satisfaction.”

He was a reluctant revolutionary.

Franklin was among the last of the Founding Fathers to come out in favor of full separation from Britain. Having lived in London for several years and held royal appointments, he instead pushed for peaceful compromise and the preservation of the empire, once writing that, “every encroachment on rights is not worth a rebellion.” When the Boston Tea Party took place in 1773, he dubbed it an “act of violent injustice on our part” and insisted that the East India Company should be compensated for its losses. Franklin had soured on the monarchy by the time he returned to the United States for the Second Continental Congress in 1775, but his past support for King George III earned him the suspicion of many of his fellow patriots. Before he publicly announced his support for American independence, a few even suspected he might be a British spy.

Franklin created a phonetic alphabet.

While living in London in 1768, Franklin embarked on a project “to give the alphabet a more natural order.” Annoyed by the many inconsistencies in English spelling, he devised his own phonetic system that ditched the redundant consonants C, J, Q, W, X and Y and added six new letters, each designed to represent its own specific vocal sound. Franklin unveiled his “Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling” in an essay published in 1779, but later scrapped the project after it failed to arouse public interest.

His son was a British loyalist.

Along with the two children he had with his wife, Deborah Read, Franklin also fathered an illegitimate son named William around 1730. The two were once close friends and partners—William helped Franklin with his famous kite experiment—but they later had a major falling out over the American Revolution. While Franklin joined in calling for independence from the mother country, William remained a staunch Tory who branded the patriots “intemperate zealots” and refused to resign his post as the royal governor of New Jersey. He spent two years in a colonial prison for opposing the revolution and later became a leader in a loyalist group before moving to England at the end of the war. The elder Franklin never forgave his son for “taking up arms against me.” He all but cut William out of his will, arguing, “the part he acted against me in the late war…will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavored to deprive me of.”

Franklin was a fashion icon in France.

In 1776, the Continental Congress sent Franklin to France to seek military aid for the revolution. The 70-year-old was already world-renowned for his lighting experiments—the French even called their electrical experimenters “Franklinistes”—but his fame soared to new heights after his arrival in Paris. Franklin capitalized on the French conception of Americans as rustic frontiersmen by dressing plainly and wearing a fur hat, which soon became his trademark and appeared in countless French portraits and medallions. Women even took to imitating the cap with oversized wigs in a style called “coiffure a la Franklin.” When Franklin later traded the fur cap for a white hat during the signing of the 1778 treaty between France and the United States, white-colored headgear instantly became a fashion trend among the men of Paris.

He spent his later years as an abolitionist.

Franklin owned at least two slaves during his life, both of whom worked as household servants, but in his old age, he came to view slavery as a vile institution that ran counter to the principles of the American Revolution. He took over as president of a Pennsylvania abolitionist society in 1787, and in 1790 he presented a petition to Congress urging it to grant liberty “to those unhappy men who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage.” While the petition was ignored, Franklin kept up the fight until his death a few months later and even included a provision in his will that required his daughter and son-in-law to free their slave to get their inheritance.

Franklin left Boston and Philadelphia an unusual gift in his will.

When he died in April 1790, Franklin willed 2,000 pounds sterling to his birthplace of Boston and his adopted home of Philadelphia. The largesse came with an unusual caveat: for its first 100 years, the money was to be placed in a trust and only used to provide loans to local tradesmen. A portion could then be spent, but the rest would remain off-limits for another 100 years, at which point the cities could use it as they saw fit. Boston and Philadelphia followed Franklin’s wishes, and by 1990 their funds were worth $4.5 million and $2 million, respectively. The two towns have since used the windfall to help finance the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Boston. Philadelphia also put some of its funds toward scholarships for students attending trade schools.

He’s a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

Franklin had a lifelong love of swimming that began during his childhood in Boston. One of his first inventions was a pair of wooden hand paddles that he used to propel himself through the Charles River, and he wrote of once using a kite to skim across a pond. While living in England in the 1760s, he displayed such an impressive array of swimming strokes during a dip in Thames that a friend offered to help him open his own swimming school. Franklin declined the offer, but he remained a proponent of swimming instruction for the rest of his life, once writing, “every parent would be glad to have their children skilled in swimming.” His aquatic exploits have since earned him an honorary induction into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.

SOURCE: HISTORY.COM

49 thoughts on “Franklin

    1. Good morning! Winter has finally arrived here – down to 6, very windy, but only a couple of inches of snow, thankfully. Brrrr…..just be careful, whatever you choose to do! Wheezer came and ate the rest of the food during the night so I’ve refilled his dish. I’ve put a box underneath the chair, with the cushion on top of the box to block some of the cold and a soft blanket inside. I also put his dish right next to the box as well. Hopefully, he’ll get the hint but we’ll see.

      Liked by 1 person

  1. Walter Curt
    @wcdispatch
    🚨The SomaliFraud Investigation Has a Cash Problem..

    Remember our number:

    $700MM moved in two years, a burn rate of rough $1MM, every day, for around 730 days.

    We’re talking about an industrial pipeline of cash.

    There are more than a problems here, but let’s go through a couple:

    1. Physical cash is not infinite at the branch level. It’s ordered, tracked, and replenished through a Federal Reserve district system that is designed to notice abnormal demand.

    Now put that into Minnesota.

    Not New York.
    Not California.
    Not Texas.

    Minnesota has a finite banking footprint, finite vault cash, finite armored-car routing, finite Fed cash-office capacity relative to the national hubs.

    So if MN alone was sourcing anything close to $1MM a day in high denominations for two straight years, you’d see strain.

    You’d see persistent, repeat demand, unusual denomination ordering, recurring cash logistics.

    You’d see it because the system has to move the paper from somewhere.

    And the Fed doesn’t “guess” about that. They account for it.

    That kind of sustained pull would stick out to the people whose entire job is watching demand, ordering patterns, and abnormal flows.

    2nd Problem:

    Two states wouldn’t fix his issue.

    OH + MN still leaves the same daily requirement.

    You still need a million dollars a day, still need continuity, still need reliability.

    You still need enough branches, enough institutions, enough cash order capacity, enough distance between the transactions so the pattern isn’t screaming from the dashboard.

    If you try to push that volume through only OH & MN, you’d concentrate the signal, compress the footprint, and create repetition.

    Repetition is how you’d get caught, not on day one, but at some point within that 2 year period, you are getting nailed.

    When a pattern forms, multiple layers of oversight can see it.

    Bank compliance teams see it, BSA/AML monitoring systems see it, Federal cash distribution oversight sees it.

    Airports… Inter state agencies.

    You get the point.

    And that leads us to our 3rd problem:

    If the story is “they declared it at the airport,” that does not make it invisible.

    Declarations create paper trails.

    So if the cash is being sourced, consolidated, and exported on a drumbeat for two years, the only way it stays operational is by spreading the sourcing footprint wide enough that no single district, no single metro, no single cluster of branches is carrying an abnormal share of the load.

    That means our “two-state” theory is implausible if not impossible.

    And it doesn’t hold on how many different tripwires would start chirping once that demand becomes consistent.

    So where does that place us in SomaliFraud right now?

    It places us in a multi-state network—AT LEAST—5 states.

    More plausibly 5-8.

    Why?

    Because 5-8 states lets you dilute the daily pull into smaller, more “normal-looking” slices.

    It lets you rotate institutions and geographies, avoid hammering one Federal Reserve district with a sustained, abnormal appetite for high-denomination currency, and avoid creating a single obvious hotspot.

    It also fits the only thing that matters in a long-running operation. Continuity.

    A scheme that runs two years can’t depend on one state’s vault cash and one district’s tolerance.

    It needs redundancy.
    It needs alternate routes.
    It needs multiple hubs.

    Essentially, is mandatory for a large enough footprint that the volume becomes background noise instead of a siren.

    A five-to-eight-state network is the only mathematically feasible option.

    And that’s exactly why our lens is widening.

    More soon. 🇺🇸

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Harrison

    January 17, 2026 1:37 am

    This is one example of how Denmark has “taken care of” Greenlanders…

    NUUK, Greenland — Native Greenlander Amarok Petersen was 27 years old when she learned the gut-wrenching truth about why she couldn’t have children — and that Denmark was to blame. 

    Suffering from severe uterine problems, a medical doctor discovered an IUD birth control device in her body that she didn’t know she had. 

    Danish doctors had implanted it when she was just 13 as part of a population control program for thousands of native Greenlandic girls and women. 

    “I will never have children,” Petersen told The Post, with tears of anger and sorrow welling in her eyes. “That choice was taken from me.”

    More at the link:
    https://nypost.com/2026/01/16/world-news/greenlanders-speak-out-against-danish-rule-they-stole-our-future/

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Just found this:

      Northern Pennsylvania Snow Forecast for January 17, 2026:

      winter weather advisory is in effect for Northeast Pennsylvania, including Northern Wayne, Southern Wayne, Lackawanna, and Luzerne counties, through 4 p.m. on Saturday, January 17, 2026

      • Snow accumulations are expected to range from 2 to 5 inches, with higher totals possible at elevated locations. 
      • Southerly upslope flow will enhance snowfall across south-facing higher elevations. 
      • Slippery road conditions are expected, with slow-down and caution advised for travel. 
      • The National Weather Service warns that travel impacts are likely, especially during the morning hours. 
      • Conditions are expected to improve later in the day as temperatures rise into the upper 30s. 

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Just the News: “The White House announced Friday that President Donald Trump has established a new international transitional body — the Board of Peace — tasked with overseeing the next phase of governance, reconstruction, and stabilization in the Gaza Strip. 
     
    Trump will serve as the board’s chairman. The announcement marks a key step in implementing Phase Two of Trump’s comprehensive 20-point plan to end the war between Israel and Hamas and rebuild the war-ravaged territory. 

    In a statement, the White House named several high-profile figures to the board’s executive leadership, including, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Sir Tony Blair, former UK Prime Minister, Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Marc Rowan, Apollo Global Management CEO, Ajay Banga, World Bank president, Robert Gabriel, a national security adviser and Steve Witkoff, Middle East special envoy.” 

    Liked by 1 person

  4. EXCERPT: “Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who serves as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, is drafting a transformative new bill that will return the responsibility of care for refugees to their sponsors and the charitable organizations who brought them to the United States, removing them from the tax bill of Americans. 

    “They will survive the way we traditionally did. When we admitted people, if you sponsored them, they’re your responsibility,” Paul told Just The News.

    “You have many of these church charities involved in bringing people here, and then the church charity thinks that charity involves signing them up for welfare. No. Charity is if your charity brings them here, and they can’t or aren’t working enough to have food, you feed them. It’s charitable to give your own money. It’s not charitable to take someone else’s money.”

    Paul, along with other members of Congress in both the House and the Senate, have been sounding the alarm on a key component of welfare program eligibility, which was redefined by the Biden administration, who ushered in millions of illegal immigrants under novel parameters for eligibility.

    Under U.S. law, most legal immigrants are subject to a five-year waiting period before becoming eligible for major federal means-tested public benefits like Medicaid, SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), but refugees and asylum-seekers are fully exempt from this bar and can access these programs immediately.

    $1.6 trillion in wasteful spending identified

    However, Paul argues, “What we have done is we’ve gone around the legal immigrant status, and we’ve added this whole other category of a special visa or refugee status, which is hundreds of thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of people come in on this, and they’re on welfare. It’s supposed to be against the law.”

    Paul, who began publishing his annual Festivus Report to highlight examples of federal government waste through his “airing of grievances,” has been a consistent voice opposing government waste and fraud. In the December 2025 edition, he identified approximately $1.6 trillion in wasteful spending, including funding for cocaine experiments on dogs, payments to influencers promoting COVID vaccines, and massive interest on the national debt….”

    https://justthenews.com/government/congress/refugees-wont-get-welfare-under-groundbreaking-new-bill-care-will-transfer

    Liked by 1 person

  5. EXCERPT: “For over a century, man has chased the ability to control the weather. From early rainmakers to secret military programs and geo-engineering startups, it’s real, documented and impacting tens of millions of Americans right now. 

    Yet in most of America, there’s almost no regulation. Anyone – even theoretically a hostile foreign actor – can alter your weather without your consent. Or even try to change the climate, for profit…..”

    “….Today, there’s cloud seeding in at least nine states. But the government delineates many other techniques to make rain or snow, suppress hail, build clouds, eliminate fog, or reduce evaporation using fire or heat; applying powders, sprays, or dyes to water surfaces; emitting radioactive particles or ions from towers or aircraft; using shock waves, sonic booms, or explosives; and steering lightning with powerful lasers.

    Perhaps the most debated category of weather control is Solar Radiation Management to dim the sun and cool the planet. Methods include Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI) – injecting sulfur or other reflective particles into the stratosphere, and Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) – dispersing seawater spray to make low clouds whiter.

    Believe it or not, it’s all barely regulated. A 1972 federal weather modification law runs on an honor system – just paperwork, no verification. In 35 states there are no permits required, no audits conducted, no limits imposed. Most anyone can control weather for profit, altering other people’s rainfall or snow, without ever asking permission.

    As for contrails: the EPA has said it’s not aware of any used for weather control. At least 13 states have bills pending to restrict contrail use, anyway, or other tactics. Weather control bans recently passed in Tennessee, Montana, and the Sunshine State of Florida. 

    The EPA says the Trump administration is currently figuring out whether Congress needs to act, or whether a different federal agency should take the lead on weather modification regulations.”

    https://justthenews.com/nation/technology/weather-control

    Liked by 1 person

  6. “Becca and Renee Good Were Not Married. So Why Does Everyone Keep Lying About It? Even after a lawyer representing Becca Good confirmed the pair were not married, news outlets and social media influencers refuse to correct the inaccurate portrayal of a “bereaved widow.”

    Julie Kelly, Jan 17, 2026

    EXCERPT: “Following the anti-Trump resistance fashion of resigning from the Department of Justice as a sign of protest against their higher-ups and the president, six prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota quit earlier this week rather than pursue an inquiry into the woman described as the “widow” of Renee Good, the anti-ICE activist shot and killed on January 7.

    One of the departing lawyers, Joseph Thompson, had led the office’s multi-billion dollar fraud investigation into several Medicaid-funded organizations in Minnesota. But he left his post on Tuesday—not before allowing a New York Times photographer into his government office for a photo shoot, it appears—rather than follow orders to do his job. “Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Good,” the Times reported on Jan. 13. “Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach, as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful.”

    But if Thompson and his colleagues indeed resigned over plans to investigate Good’s “widow,” they may soon regret their decision. (Or not. Either way, good riddance.) An attorney representing Renee Good’s estate acknowledged in an interview with the Washington Post that Becca Good was not her wife. Antonio Romanucci, the Chicago-based attorney who also represented the family of George Floyd and succeeded in winning a $27 million settlement for the Floyd family, said Renee’s “partner, parents and four siblings want ‘to honor her life with progress toward a kinder and more civil America.” Romanucci further confirmed the pair “were not married.”

    On Friday, just a few days after publishing the story about Thompson, the Times had to admit in a separate story that Becca and Renee “were not legally married.” But a review of Times articles published since the shooting does not show that the paper has corrected any previous articles describing Becca Good as the “wife” or “widow” of Renee Good.

    Ditto for the Washington Post. Despite being the first corporate media outlet to disclose the Goods’ nonexistent marriage, this Jan. 9 headlines and article remains in tact without a correction:

    In fact, reporters, social media influencers, and politicians continue to describe Becca Good as the wife of Renee; that initial misrepresentation came from Becca Good herself, who not only screamed out after the shooting that Renee was “her wife,” but also described Renee as “my wife” in a statement released to the media on Jan. 9. But rather than bothering to fact-check Becca Good’s claims, everyone including talking heads on Fox News parroted that definition:

    (Video @ link)

    Sticking with the lie that Renee and Becca were married is a critical part of the overall false narrative about the pair and their actions that day. The narrative goes like this: a happy lesbian married couple had just dropped their young son off at school when they just happened upon an ICE operation in their community so they exercised their First Amendment rights at that moment to express their displeasure with illegal immigrant removals.

    Why Tell the Truth When the Lies Sound So Much Nicer?……”

    Video: https://www.declassified.live/p/becca-and-renee-good-were-not-married

    Liked by 1 person

  7. “A new $6,000 tax deduction for Americans 65 and older could boost refunds for millions of older taxpayers, putting an average of about $670 more in their pockets this year, according to advocacy group AARP.

    But some older Americans could see far more. AARP notes that taxpayers in the 22% tax bracket — roughly those earning between $44,000 and the deduction’s $75,000 income cap — could save as much as $1,320 per person.

    “The benefits could be vast,” said Bill Sweeney, AARP’s senior vice president of government affairs, in a conference call Thursday. “The bonus deduction will run through 2028 — that is four years of immediate relief at a time when older Americans are facing really high costs.”

    Liked by 1 person

  8. “A Florida man captured a rare and surprising moment when a black bear was spotted sitting upright in a modern V-bottom motorboat, just a few feet from the shoreline. The bear appears calm, resting its paws on the steering wheel, showing natural and un-posed behavior. The calm lake water reflects the boat and surrounding trees, creating a stunning wildlife scene. This close-up, handheld phone footage offers a unique look at how wildlife can occasionally interact with human spaces, but remember, wild bears are unpredictable. Always observe from a safe distance and never approach or feed them…”

    “A heavy-lifting helicopter, a Yasur, had been sent to recover a smaller chopper which had made an emergency landing after encountering bad weather in the Gush Etzion area, directly south of Jerusalem, in the West Bank. It’s understood the smaller aircraft, a Yanshuf, had been damaged in the storm.

    The rescue operation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intended for the Yasur to use the sling-load method to airlift the grounded chopper. While in flight, the damaged aircraft became detached from the helicopter that was carrying it.”

    Liked by 1 person

  9. ⚖️ Alabama makes organ harvesting illegal (again, but louder)

    Alabama lawmakers approved legislation making it a felony to harvest organs from prison inmates without family consent.

    You’re probably thinking: “So… this was happening?” Correct. At least 8 families sued. Those are just the known cases. The law already banned it. This just adds consequences. Which apparently needed clarification.

    Read the horror here..

    🐎 Horses can smell your fear

    A new study shows horses can literally smell fear through changes in human sweat. They react. Their physiology changes. They know.

    Rodeos suddenly feel even more awkward

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Just The News: “President Donald Trump on Saturday announced he plans to sue JPMorgan Chase for allegedly “debanking” him after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.  

    “I’ll be suing JPMorgan Chase over the next two weeks for incorrectly and inappropriately DEBANKING me after the January 6th Protest, a protest that turned out to be correct for those doing the protesting,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “The Election was RIGGED!”

    JPMorgan did not immediately respond to Trump’s post. The company’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, has publicly acknowledged that the organization has debanked certain individuals.

    “We do not debank people because of religious or political affiliations,” Dimon said. “We do debank them. They have religious and political affiliations. We debank people who are Democrats, we debank people who are Republicans, we debank different religious folks. Never was that for that reason.”

    Liked by 1 person

  11. Baby it’s cold outside!

    Dreamscape

    She was delicious

    Husum (North Frisian: Hüsem) in Schleswig-Holstein, Northern Germany.

    Oops

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Just The News: “In the capital city of Nuuk, Greenland, thousands of residents marched through snowy, near-freezing conditions on Saturday to voice their opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated statements about taking control of Greenland. 

    Dressed in warm clothes and holding Greenland’s flag, the demonstrators made their way toward the U.S. Consulate, chanting slogans such as, “Greenland is not for sale.” Other signs read, “Hands off Greenland,” and “Orange hands off Greenland.”

    The protest drew a wide range of participants and — according to police — was the largest assembly the city has seen, highlighting strong public sentiment in favor of the island’s cultural identity and political autonomy. The photo gallery from the event captures scenes from the march and the resilience of the people who turned out in support of their homeland’s future.”

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Just The News: “U.S. military forces conducted an airstrike in northwest Syria on January 16 that killed Bilal Hasan al-Jasim, a senior militant leader linked to an Al-Qaeda affiliate, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said. 

    Officials stated al-Jasim had direct ties to an ISIS gunman involved in a December 13 ambush near Palmyra that left two U.S. soldiers and an American interpreter dead and wounded other personnel.

    CENTCOM described al-Jasim as an experienced planner of terrorist attacks and emphasized that the strike demonstrates continued U.S. resolve to go after those who target American forces. 

    Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of CENTCOM, said there is “no safe place” for individuals who conduct or inspire attacks on U.S. citizens and military personnel.

    The strike is reportedly part of a broader U.S. operation known as Operation Hawkeye Strike, initiated in response to the December ambush. Since then, U.S. and partner forces have targeted more than 100 ISIS infrastructure and weapons sites and detained or neutralized hundreds of militants.”

    Liked by 1 person

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