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This droll tradition comes from the City of Brotherly Love, also home to famous cheesesteaks, cream cheese, and the Liberty Bell. A search on "ben franklin grave pennies" bypassed the intriguing Benjamin Franklin category in Yahoo! and sent us straight to Benjamin Franklin's Funeral and Grave. The illustrated account of Franklin's passing at the age of 84 describes his 1790 funeral procession, attended by some 20,000 mourners, and includes a photo
of his grave (with pennies), located at 5th and Arch in old Philadelphia. We also learned that "thousands of tourists annually still come to pay their respect to Benjamin Franklin... Pennies dot his tombstone, as a local tradition claims that such a practice will bring the penny-tosser luck." The custom relates to a pithy cliché attributed to Franklin and published in his Poor Richard's Almanac: "A penny saved, is a penny earned." We went back to our search results. Two different personal home pages describe the penny-pitching practice witnessed on a visit to Philadelphia's Independence National Historic Park. Both visitors are amused by the seemingly frivolous homage to the practical, thrifty Mr. Franklin,
whose grave is directly across the street from the Philadelphia Mint. The ritual also makes an interesting appearance in Germantown Academy's Philadelphia Math Trail, documenting an annual arithmetic field trip through historic Philly with homework along the way. Here, the photo of Franklin's grave is accompanied by two word problems: a) If Ben had deposited one penny into a certificate of deposit that earned 4.5% compounded quarterly on the last day of his life, as of today, what would be the current value of the account for Ben's descendants? b) How long would it have
taken for the 1 cent to grow to $500.00?
If you're not up to the math, simply consider the following: "A penny tossed, is a penny lost..."
The answers: a) $120.55 and b) 242 years
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