Madame Tussaud was born Marie Grosholtz in France in 1761, and learned to sculpt wax as a teenager -- her early subjects included Voltaire and Benjamin Franklin -- and went on to become a favorite of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

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Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) pioneered the spirit of self-help in America.

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In 1775, Benjamin Franklin became Postmaster-General.

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If this sounds weirdly narcissistic, consider that the movement has a forebear in a quintessential American: Benjamin Franklin, the founding father of self-tracking.

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Benjamin Franklin was one of the first to suggest that the extreme cold of 1783-84 over much of the Northern Hemisphere was connected to the Laki event.

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The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and hotelier Orison Swett Marden's Success magazine (founded in 1897) were mere warm-ups to Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936) and Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking (1952).

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