I will only mention one here.
During his imprisonment in the Luxembourg Prison in Paris, Thomas Paine was one of the many who were sentenced to be guillotined at that period when the moral temperature of France was many degrees above the normal mark, and men doled out death more freely than _sous_.

It was the custom among the jailers to make a chalk mark upon the door of each cell that held a man condemned.

Paine was one of a "consignment" of one hundred and sixty-eight prisoners sentenced to be beheaded at dawn, and the jailer made the fateful chalk mark upon his door along with the others, that the guards would know he was destined for the tumbrel that rolled away from the prison hour by hour all through the night.

_But his door chanced to be open_, so that the mark, hastily made, turned out to be on the wrong side! When the door was closed it was inside, and no one knew of it; so the guard passed on, and Paine lived.
It is interesting but difficult to write about Thomas Paine.
The trouble about him is that his personality is too overwhelming to be cut and measured in proper lengths by any writer.

He does not lend himself, like lesser historical figures, to continuous or disinterested narrative.