#OTD in 1794.
Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme générale, is tried, convicted and guillotined in one day in Paris.
The day after Lavoisier's execution, the great mathematician Louis de Lagrange commented: "It only took them a moment to knock that head off, and perhaps a hundred years won't be enough to reproduce a similar one".