Year 1706 (MDCCVI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar. In the german calendar it was a rare year starting on Thursday, one day ahead of the Julian and ten days behind the Gregorian calendar.
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.
Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity; as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical and democratic values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."
Louis Nicolas was a French missionary in Canada in the late-seventeenth and early-18th century. Born August 15, 1634 in Aubenas, Vivarais (France), this Jesuit priest arrived in New France in 1664 and stayed for eleven years. He was fascinated by the wildlife and Native peoples of the New World, and is believed to have been the author of the hand-drawn book known as the Codex canadiensis, which documents these subjects. Louis Nicolas is the confirmed author of the books Histoire Naturelle des Indes Occidentales and the Grammaire algonquine. Historians believe that he died in 1682.