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Je vais plaider la plus ridicule des causes; il n'existe rien de plus bafoué en civilisation que l'amour sentimental.
(I will plead the most ridiculous of all causes; nothing is more flouted in civilization than sentimental love.)
Charles Fourier, French utopian socialist, born on April 7, 1772; Le Nouveau Monde Amoureux

Under civilisation, poverty is born of super-abundance itself.
Charles Fourier

In his youth Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry, and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was called a 'bad' man. Then he became 'good,' abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles, and wrote bad poetry.
Bertrand Russell; William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770

Had he (Fourier) tried to govern a single village or workshop, he might have discovered the vanity of drawing out schemes of society on paper, the folly of legislating for men as though they were bricks and mortar, and the hopelessness of doing them good in any way save through the consent of their erratic, perverse, and incalculable wills.
Robert Chambers, (Ed.), The Book of Days: A miscellany of popular antiquities in connection with the calendar, etc, W & R Chambers, London, 1881 (1879 Edition is online and 1869 edition here with CD-ROM available; See also The English Year: A Personal Selection from Chambers' Book of Days)

A pile of old copies of copies [sic] of Punch I found in the back room of a fatherly second-hand bookseller introduced me to the treasure of Charles Keene, Linley Sambourne, Randolph Caldecott and Dana Gibson. The more I poured over the intricate technical quality of these artists the more difficult did drawing appear. How impossible that one could ever become an artist! But then I came on Phil May, who combined quality with apparent facility. Once having discovered Phil May I never let him go.
David Low, New Zealand-born cartoonist, born on April 7, 1891   Source

François Marie Charles Fourier

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Festival of Megalesia (Magna Mater) of Cybele (Apr 4 - 10), ancient Rome

Egyptian day (dies egypticus, dies ægypticus or dies mala), unlucky day in Medieval Europe. ("But, notwithstanding, I will trust the Lord" was the associated saying.)

Feast day of St Aibert, recluse

Feast day of St Alexander Rawlins

Feast day of St Feast day of St Aphraates, anchoret
(Wood anemone, Anemone nemorosa, is today's plant, dedicated to this saint.)

Feast day of St Brenach

Feast day of St Calliopus

Feast day of St Celsus

Feast day of St Cyriaca and Companions

Feast day of St Edward Oldcorne

Feast day of St Epiphanius

Feast day of St Finan, of Ireland

Feast day of St George the Younger

Feast day of St Gibardus

Feast day of St Goran

Feast day of St Hegesippus, a primitive father

Feast day of St Henry Walpole

Feast day of St Herman Joseph, confessor

Feast day of St John Baptist de La Salle

Feast day of St Pelagius

Feast day of St Peleusius

Feast day of St Saturninus

Feast day of St Ursulina

Click for Eastern Orthodox liturgical days    Shop saints

Katori-jingu Otauesai (Rice-planting Festival), Katori Shrine, Sawara-shi, Chiba Prefecture, Japan (Apr 7 - 8)
"Women dressed in traditional farmer's costumes sing rice-planting songs while sowing rice seedlings in paddy fields."   Source

Tsurugaoka Hachiman (Shrine) Spring Festival, Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture (Apr 7 - 14)
Kamakura, seven centuries ago, was the first seat of feudal government. This is one of Japan's famous cherry blossom festivals, with many events and parades, and is popular with tourists.

Nagasaki Takoage, or Kite-Flying Event, Nagasaki, Japan (Apr 3 - 29)

Women's Day, Mozambique

National Day of Hope (Hope Day), USA
"A joint Congressional resolution declared April 7 as National Day of Hope in honor of the important work done by Childhelp USA, which is dedicated to helping prevent and treat child abuse. The day is meant to give hope to children who have suffered from child abuse and neglect."   Source

1506 Saint Francis Xavier (d. 1552; feast day December 3), co-founder of the Society of Jesus

Christianity arrived in Japan centuries before St Xavier, scholars say
"Contrary to popular lore, Christianity in Japan dates back centuries before the 1549 arrival of Jesuit missionary Saint Francis Xavier, a Christian evangelist and other researchers claim.

"American Reverend Ken Joseph told a gathering here on March 16 that Christianity first came to the Far East roughly 1,800 years ago along the "Silk Road," passing through China to Nara, central Japan.

"Evidence of this, Reverend Joseph said, was a copy of the Gospel of Saint Matthew in old Chinese script, dating back to the ninth century, found inside the Koryuji Buddhist Temple in Kyoto, near Nara.

"This temple is cited by at least one historian as having been built about 818 atop a Christian building erected in 603 that was destroyed by fire.

"'Many Buddhist temples were built on top of old, burned down Christian churches left in ruins. Diligent research today can still uncover these lost relics,' Reverend Joseph said.

"Researcher M.L. Young says that one of the most sacred objects of the Nishi Honganji Buddhist Temple, founded by Kobo Daishi in 806 after his contact with a Nestorian Christian monastery in Beijing, is 'the Lord of the Universe's Discourse on Almsgiving,' a commentary on the Sermon on the Mount and other Matthean passages.

"Christianity was referred to as the 'luminous religion' in Chinese records referring to Nestorian missioners.

"Reverend Joseph presented slides of several artifacts and statues that once had Christian crosses carved into them, but which had subsequently been erased or modified by Buddhist followers, he alleged.

"Nestorian Christianity dates back to the first century of the Christian era.

"Japanese researchers say that the first bearers of Christianity to Japan were the people from the  (Nestorian) Assyrian Church of the East who came to Japan from the Silk Road cities of Mesopotamia, and Persia starting around the fifth century onwards.

"'Christianity was much more widespread than believed,' Hollingsworth said."   Source

1539 Tobias Stimmer, Swiss painter, cartoonist (Comedia) whose most famous works are the paintings on the Strasbourg astronomical clock

1652 Pope Clement XII (d. 1740)

1727 Michel Adanson (d. August 3, 1806), French naturalist of Scottish descent who developed a system of plant classification based on physical characteristics; the system was opposed by Carolus Linnaeus, and was not widely used.

In 1774, Adanson submitted to the consideration of the French Academy of Sciences an immense work, extending to all known creatures and substances. It consisted of 27 large volumes of manuscript, employed in displaying the general relations of all these matters, and their distribution; 150 volumes more, occupied with the alphabetical arrangement of 40,000 species; a vocabulary, containing 200,000 words, with their explanations; and a number of detached memoirs, 40,000 figures and 30,000 specimens of the three kingdoms of nature. 

The committee to which the inspection of this enormous mass was entrusted strongly recommended Adanson to separate and publish all that was peculiarly his own, leaving out what was merely compilation. He obstinately rejected this advice; and the huge work, at which he continued to labour, was never published. He was reduced to such a depth of poverty as to be unable to appear before the French Institute when it invited him to take his place among its members.

1770 William Wordsworth (d. 1850), English poet

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1772 Charles Fourier (François Marie Charles Fourier; François Fourier; d. October 10, 1837), French philosopher, economist and utopian socialist. Fourier inspired the founding of the communist community called La Reunion near present-day Dallas, Texas as well as several other communities within the USA such as the Wisconsin Phalanx.

Fourier was the son of a linen draper, and was born at Besançon, France. After working as a haberdasher's clerk, and a merchant, he was drafted into the army in 1796, but after two years was discharged as an invalid. In 1808, he published a book about his plans for the reconstruction of society, but it sold less than a dozen copies. However, after six years, a copy of it fell into the hands of a wealthy man named Monsieur Just Muiron, who read it avidly and decided to become the author's patron.

Between the years 1816 - '21, Fourier lived in the country and produced the bulk of his writings. In 1822, he tried again to sell his books, but without success. In 1825, he went to Lyons and worked as a cashier at only 50 pounds a year. He later got another patron, Madame Clarissa Vigoureux.

His ideas were utopian, envisioning hierarchies of satisfied workers doing what they loved doing. He was a believer in the passionate good and 'attractive' labour, and he invented 'Gastrosophy', the philosophy of food. Hundreds of phalansteries sprouted in the mid-19th Century, celebrating his principles and vision.

" … Fourier's passion for numbers led him to predict that the ideal world he was helping to create would last 80,000 years, 8,000 of them in an era of Perfect Harmony in which:

androgynous plants would copulate

six moons would orbit the earth

the North Pole would be milder than the Mediterranean

the seas would lose their salt and become oceans of lemonade

the world would contain 37 million poets equal to Homer, 37 million mathematicians equal to Newton and 37 million dramatists equal to Molière, although "these are approximate estimates"

every woman would have four lovers or husbands simultaneously …

"… Fourier can also be described as a brilliant exponent of the idea of alienation, a concern which we will find fully developed in Marx, or as an early theoretician of the affluent society, a theme later developed by the American economist, John Kenneth Galbraith. His sometimes nonsensical statements aside, Fourier's ideas do make some sense when placed alongside the more advanced ideas of a Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud or Herbert Marcuse, the critic of the one-dimensional society of the 1960s. His vision that mankind's existence is somehow false or repressive, was certainly taken up again by later thinkers, of course, with quite different conclusions."    Source

"If all persons were free to enjoy sensuality, love, wealth, luxury, art, and food, he felt, social discord would cease to exist. While orthodox religion attempts to thwart the passions, Fourier was convinced that instead they should be harnessed, for the good of humanity. A stable and fulfilling economic system could be constructed by allowing each person – through following freely chosen activities, or 'Attractive Labor' – to contribute in a unique manner to the developing community.

"Fourier proposed large communes, or 'Phalanxes,' of 1,620 members in which the reformers would enjoy Association and Harmony. Members would express all twelve major Passions and happily engage in gardening, arboriculture, light industry, operas, and orgies. The New England Transcendentalists eagerly embraced Fourier's reformist zeal, and, in 1844, the Brook Farm community reshaped itself into a Fourierist organization."   Source

Charles Fourier Archive    Brook Farm    Fourierism in the USA

Early progressives in the Book of Days    The utopian impulse

Utopians and socialists    More on Fourier    More    More    And more

Left to right: Jorgen Jørgensen portrait; 
portrait of an Aboriginal Australian, by Jorgenson;
Jorgen Jørgensen self portrait

1780 Jørgen Jørgensen (Jorgen Jorgenson), the 'Convict King', and one of the most incredible but true characters of Australian colonial folklore. He was King of Iceland, even claimed the throne of Denmark, but ended up homeless on the streets of Hobart, Tasmania.

The son of a Danish clockmaker to the royal family, adventurer Jorgenson became a convict and a government-appointed hunter of Aboriginals in the new British settlement of Van Diemen's Land – Tasmania, as it is known now, Australia's island state. Yet he was one of the colonists who knew the Aboriginal population best, having lived with them, and he wrote a couple of books about them. He claimed to have been the first whaler to have harpooned a whale in the River Derwent (1804).

Jorgenson was engaged as an interpreter on an English trading expedition to Iceland in the summer of 1809, where he proclaimed himself sovereign for the next two months.

"While visiting his family in Denmark in 1807, the Napoleonic Wars caught up with him, with the British Navy bombing Copenhagen for three days to destroy the Danish Navy and prevent it falling into the hands of the French. As a consequence of Danish anger at this pre-emptive strike, Jorgenson was made the master of the Admiral Jawl, and instructed to hunt down British ships. On 2nd March 1808 the Admiral Jawl was captured and Jorgenson made a prisoner of war.

"Mysteriously, we next find Jorgenson engaged as an interpreter on an English trading expedition to Iceland in the summer of 1809, where he becomes the ruler of Iceland for the next two months. This event is seen as the beginning of the road to eventual Icelandic independence from Denmark in 1944, but back in 1809, Jorgenson was deposed by the British Navy and sent back to England.

"After these incidents, how Jorgenson managed to became a spy for England on continental Europe is a good question, but he did, and in this role observed the Battle of Waterloo, if at a distance. It was during this time that Jorgen fell prey to gambling and alcohol, which became the bane of his life.

"Later settling into a life in London, where he attempted a career as a writer, the twin demons of gambling and alcohol led to a conviction for theft, banishment from England, and when discovered to be still at large, sentenced to death. The gallows became transmuted to transportation to Wan [sic] Diemen's Land in 1826, where he became engaged as an explorer for the Van Diemen's Land Company, and then as a police constable in the Midlands. As a constable he was involved in the roving parties, and after Robinson, had more contact with the Tasmanian Aborigines in their natural surroundings than any other colonist at the time, and would later write of his experiences and observations."   Source

Jorgenson died in Hobart, Van Diemen's Land , a pauper on January 20, 1841, and was buried at St Mary's Church Graveyard.

See Hogan, James Francis (1855 - 1925), The Convict King (PDF file) , Being the Life and Adventures of Jorgen Jorgensen, Monarch of Iceland, Naval Captain, Revolutionist, British Diplomatic Agent, Author, Dramatist, Preacher, Political Prisoner, Gambler, Hospital Dispenser, Continental Traveller, Explorer, Editor, Expatriated Exile, and Colonial Constable.

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1860 Will Keith Kellogg (usually referred to as WK Kellogg; d. October 6, 1951), American industrialist in food manufacturing. With his brother John Harvey Kellogg (1852 - 1943), he propagated eating cereals as healthy breakfast food, especially corn flakes. The two brothers later fell out over the issue of adding sugar to breakfast cereals, which WK Kellogg wanted to do. In 1906, WK founded the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company which later became the Kellogg Company, with the added sugar. In 1930, he established the WK Kellogg Foundation.

1884 Bronislaw Malinowski (d. May 16, 1942), Polish anthropologist resident in London (Crime and Custom in Savage Society, 1926; Sex and Repression in Savage Society, 1927). He is widely considered to be one of the most important anthropologists of the 20^th century because of his pioneering work on ethnographic fieldwork, the study of reciprocity, and his detailed contribution to the study of Melanesia. Malinowski originated the school of social anthropology known as functionalism.

1891 Sir David Low (d. September 19, 1963), New Zealand-born cartoonist whose cartoons were published in his home country when he was as young as 15.

He migrated to Sydney, Australia, in 1911 (some sources say he was 18 when he did this) at the invitation of The Bulletin on which he worked with two other great cartoonists, Livingstone Hopkins and Norman Lindsay.

In 1919, he went to London, where he made his career and earned fame for his Colonel Blimp depictions and his merciless satirizing of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and their policies. David Low received a knighthood in 1962.

Cartoonists of the early Sydney Bulletin    More   And more

Lawson & Co: associations with Henry and Louisa Lawson

1891 Ole Kirk Christiansen, Danish inventor of LEGO

1893 Allen Dulles, (d. 1969) director of the Central Intelligence Agency

1904 Ralph Bunche (d. 1971), diplomat, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize

1908 Percy Faith, American orchestra leader

1915