Perhaps one of our nation's most complicated patriots Picture a stormy Philadelphia night in June 1752. A middle-aged man in a plain coat stands in an open field beside his young son, William. A silk kite rises into the black clouds, twine dancing in the wind, a brass key dangling from the string. Thunder cracks. A spark jumps from the key to Benjamin Franklin’s knuckle. In that single, electrifying moment, he tamed the heavens and proved lightning was electricity. The world

In an era before the internet, social media, or viral memes, Thomas Paine achieved what we now call "going viral" with his revolutionary pamphlet Common Sense. Published anonymously on January 10, 1776, this 47-page tract sold an estimated 120,000 copies in its first three months and up to 500,000 by the end of the Revolutionary War. With a colonial population of about 2.5 million, it reached roughly one in every five colonists—men, women, and children.