I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do for this Daily Create, so I tried out a bunch of ideas before landing on this one. I’ve always been fond of science, so the first thing I thought of was the periodic table of elements. The 106th element is Seaborgium, which I thought could be really cool to illustrate, but unfortunately, no one actually knows what it looks like, so I was out of luck there. Then I remembered a website that I’ve stumbled across plenty of times before called On This Day. This gave me a huge list of things that happened on June 10th throughout history, from the hanging of the first victim of the Salem Witch Trials to the release of the 2007 song “I’m a Gummy Bear” by the German band Gummibär.

Anyways, I chose this Benjamin Franklin fact because it was one of the more well-known events on this day. I remember learning a little about it in school, but I was young, so I didn’t really look into it. When I first came across it during my research, I wondered if the key was accurate or if it was misinformation that everyone just assumes is a fact. I know there are lots of historical events that actually didn’t happen like they’re described in textbooks, so I was curious if this was the case in this instance. What I found out was that Benjamin Franklin did attach a key to a kite, and I learned that it proved his theory that lightning was a form of electricity.

I made the image on Google Slides, mostly because I find it’s a lot easier to use than most editing software. I wasn’t doing anything too fancy, so the tools I had access to were more than adequate. The lightning storm background and the key are both public domain images, but the rest is all me. I used the shape tool to make the kite’s general shape and then I used various line tools to add details. The string that’s tying the key to the kite is entirely my design, which I made by playing around with curved lines for the main string and freeform shaping for the knot. Even though the end result definitely isn’t perfect, I’m happy with how it came out!

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