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.