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Thank you. It's May 8th, 1794, in Paris, France, five years into the French Revolution.

On the back of a battered cart, 50-year-old scientist Antoine Lavoisier hunches down, trying to shield his face.

As he passes, the angry crowd lining the street shouts insults at him and hurls rotten vegetables,

rocks, and clumps of mud in his direction. Despite being one of France's greatest scientist,

Antoine has been locked away in prison for months. And now his past ties to the deposed king Louis XVIth have sealed his fate. Antoine has just been convicted as a traitor

to the revolution, and now execution awaits. The cart bumps and rattles over the cobblestones,

drawing closer and closer to the scaffold.

Finally, it jerks to a halt in a wide public square, seething with spectators.

Antoine stumbles as he's pulled from the cart.

The guards grip his arms guiding Antoine's trembling legs to the scaffold.

There the executioner and his guillotine await.

Antoine is pushed to the ground and forced to kneel, and his head is placed beneath the blade.

An eerie silence falls over the crowd, and for a brief moment everything goes still.

But then comes a creak of wood, a rustle of rope, and the blade falls.

Cutting short Antoine's life, work, and legacy in one swift, unforgiving stroke.

The execution of the influential Antoine Lavoisier will send shockways through Paris's scientific

community. Antoine had discovered and named the element oxygen, and he had tried to push science

toward more precise methods through the use of a new system of measurements.

...