Happy Birthday, Mr. Paine
Today is the birthday of one of our most important and all too often overlooked founding fathers, Thomas Paine. He was born on Jan. 29, 1737. Paine was a truly remarkable man who had a major role in both the American and French revolutions. His pamphlet Common Sense, published in January 1776, was the spark that ignited the revolutionary fires in the American colonies. It was the best-selling work of the entire 1700s in America with some 500,000 copies sold.
