OCTOBER 17 — HENRI DE SAINT-SIMON
French utopian theorist, ruined aristocrat, proto-socialist.

Philippe Joseph Machereau, Saint-Simonian Temple and City, 1832. Architectural plan by the Saint-Simonian commune founded in the Parisian neighborhood of Ménilmontant, following the writer’s death. After the first few staircases were built, the project was brought to a halt by the French police, who arrested the movement’s leaders.

OCTOBER 17 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
SWEETEST DAY. Japan: KANNAME-SAI HARVEST FESTIVAL. BLACK POETRY DAY.
Isle of Ely, England: ST. AUDREY’S (origin of “Tawdry”) Fair.

ALSO ON OCTOBER 17 IN HISTORY…
1711 — America’s first published Black poet, Jupiter Hammon, born.
1760 — French utopian theorist Henri Saint-Simon born, Paris, France.
1889 — Russian radical critic Nikolay Chernyshevsky dies, Viluisk, Siberia.
1920 — John Reed dies in Moscow, Soviet Union and is buried in Kremlin Wall.
1931 — Gangster Al Capone sentenced to eleven years for tax evasion.

Excerpted from The 2009 Autonomedia Calendar of Jubilee Saints: Radical Heroes for the New Millennium by James Koehnline and the Autonomedia Collective