In the backstory for the interactive bedtime stories I told my kids from about 2007-2012, a young Benjamin Franklin discovered glowing green aether (which expands & glows when exposed to radiation), used it to power his printing press and light the streets of Philadelphia. When he threatened to share it with France, King George reluctantly agreed to admit the American colonies(and all the empire’s other holdings, including Canada, Australia, India, Ireland, etc.) as co-equal sovereign nations under the flag of the United States of Britannia.