Thomas Paine was a French revolutionary

Thomas Paine wrote "Common Sense," the most important pamphlet of the Revolutionary War. The work became a bestseller and bolstered the American desire for freedom from Britain.

Paine didn't stop with the American Revolution, though. He took his revolutionary activities across the Atlantic to France.

Despite the fact he couldn't speak the language, Paine was elected to the French National Convention, where he became an enemy of the more radical Montagnard faction.

That was not a good position to be in, on the eve of the Reign of Terror. After the Montagnards seized power, Paine was thrown in jail. He survived because of some sheer, dumb luck. A jailer missed the chalk mark on his cell door that denoted his death sentence, according to Harvey Kaye's "Thomas Paine and the Promise of America."

He didn't lose his head and was eventually released thanks to the machinations of American minister and fellow Founding Father James Monroe.