Today is the anniversary of Poor Richard's Almanac publication (Dec. 19, 1732)

At the age of 26, Benjamin Franklin began publishing Poor Richard's Almanac. He wrote in his autobiography: 'In 1732 I first published my almanack under the name of Richard Saunders; it was continued by me about 25 years, commonly called 'Poor Richard's Almanac.' I endeavored to make it both entertaining and useful, and it accordingly came to be in such demand that I reaped considerable profit from it, vending annually near 10,000, and observing that it was generally read, scarce any neighborhood in the province being without it, I considered it as a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the people, who bought scarcely any other books; I therefore filled all the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable days in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth, and thereby securing virtue, it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, as to use here one of those proverbs, 'It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright.''

Even though everyone knew that Richard Saunders was Benjamin Franklin, he enjoyed using a pseudonym and kept it in place for all 26 annual issues of the almanac. And it gave him a chance for Richard Saunders to insult his printer, Benjamin Franklin.
Poor Richard started out as a dull astronomer who couldn't get anything right, but over the years he became more of a hard-working, morally upright citizen. The cover of the first almanac advertised its contents: 'The lunations, eclipses, judgment of the weather, Spring tides, planets, motions, and mutual aspects, sun and moon's rising and setting, length of days, time of high water, fairs, courts, and observable days.' But what made Poor Richard's Almanac such a mainstay in Colonial life were the clever sayings, what Franklin called 'proverbial sentences.' Franklin isn't exactly the author of these proverbs -- plenty were already sayings, well-known or obscure -- but he rewrote them to sound as folksy and American as possible, and also as clever.
In Poor Richard's Almanac, Franklin wrote:

'Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.'

'Fish and visitors smell after three days.'

'Beware of the young Doctor & the old Barber.'

'There are no gains without pains.'

'A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.'