Contractors renovating Benjamin Franklin's former home in London in 1998 made the horrifying discovery of more than a thousand human bones buried in his basement.

A closer look

Contractors renovating Benjamin Franklin's former home in London in 1998 made the horrifying discovery of more than a thousand human bones buried in his basement. Before anyone could accuse the founding father of being a prolific eighteenth-century serial killer, historians figured out that the remains were tied to his close friend and housemate, William Hewson. Hewson was an ambitious young surgeon who ran an illegal anatomy school out of the property, relying on grave robbers to supply him with fresh cadavers for dissection. Since disposing of dissected bodies was tricky business when you were operating an underground medical school, Hewson just decided to bury the evidence under Franklin's floorboards. It proves that even America's most brilliant polymath wasn't immune to the classic roommate problem of someone leaving their gross science projects lying around the house