By the time he was 38, Thomas Paine had been a tax collector, a schoolteacher, tobacconist, journalist, grocer, a failed inventor, an impoverished immigrant and a multiple bankrupt. On this day in 1776 he became a bestselling author. The book wasn't even a book, really; it was a pamphlet titled Common Sense. But it sold a half million copies, and it persuaded a sufficient number of Americans toward independence that independence was declared that summer. Paine also came up with the name for t...