Today we commemorate the death of the prophet and gnostic George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, who died sixty-two years ago in Neuilly, near Paris, surrounded by a large group of sobbing followers. Somewhat like William Blake’s notion of having been a ‘sent … Continue reading →

  Today we pay tribute to Camilo Cienfuegos – one of the most important revolutionaries in Fidel Castro’s 26th July Movement, whose popularity amongst Cubans rivalled even that of his close friend and comrade, Che Guevara – tragically killed fifty-one … Continue reading →

Sixty-seven years ago today the Nazi occupation of Serbia ended. And although fighting would continue for several weeks as the retreating axis forces were driven from Croatia and Slovenia, it was on October 27th 1944 that Germany’s “Army Section Serbia” … Continue reading →

  Today we pay tribute to the inspirational and indefatigable Eugene Victor Debs – the great American socialist leader, whose idealistic footprints can be traced across the entire length and breadth of every significant social struggle of the late-nineteenth and … Continue reading →

Today we pay tribute to Charles Fourier – the French utopian socialist, radical philosopher and eccentric visionary – who died one hundred and seventy-four years ago on this day. One of the earliest feminists, and a male at that, Fourier originated … Continue reading →

Today we remember the Native American chief of the Modoc tribe, Kintpuash – known by his foes as “Captain Jack” – who was hanged by the United States army one hundred and thirty-eight years ago today in retribution for killing … Continue reading →

Today we pay our respects to the Russian philosopher, teacher and truth-seeker, P.D. Ouspensky, who died sixty-four years ago on this day. Indisputably brilliant in his own right, Ouspensky is nevertheless best remembered because of another man’s brilliance. For despite … Continue reading →

  Today we honour the great British adventurer, author and hero, T.C. Lethbridge, the Cambridge University academic whose Timothy Leary-style volte-face midway through his illustrious archaeology career saw him newly transformed into a visionary of Blakean proportions. Out went the … Continue reading →

Today we pay tribute to Herman Melville, who died one hundred and twenty years ago on this day. At the time of his death at the age of 72, the author of Moby-Dick had abandoned his professional literary ambitions some … Continue reading →

Ninety-one years ago today, the inspirational anarchist leader Nestor Makhno –outrun, outnumbered and outmanoeuvred – led his Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine (otherwise known as the Black Army) to the unlikeliest of victories over the anti-revolutionary and vastly superior White … Continue reading →

Today we recall the Irish Republican revolutionary and martyr, Thomas Ashe, who suffered a brutal death at the hands of his British oppressors ninety-four years ago at the age of thirty-two. As a freedom fighter, Ashe had led his greatly … Continue reading →

Today we commemorate Pablo Neruda – the great and heroic poet and political activist – who died thirty-nine years ago at the age of 69. As one of the leading voices in his native Chile during its long and turbulent era … Continue reading →

Twenty years ago today, Rob Tyner took leave of this planet at the age of 47 after suffering a heart attack behind the wheel of his parked car in the family driveway. He left behind not only his longtime wife Becky and three … Continue reading →

In his life, the Chilean folksinger Victor Jara had been the voice of his country’s dispossessed. As one of the founders of Nueva Canción – the socially committed movement of ‘new song’ that played such a powerful role throughout Latin … Continue reading →

Today we celebrate one of the world’s most beloved poets, Dante Alighieri, who died six hundred and ninety years ago. Despite the passage of nearly seven centuries, and the seismic political and religious shifts that have occurred since the medieval … Continue reading →

Three hundred and thirty-five years ago today, the most Visionary and Prophetic reformer of the entire English Civil War period died at the age of sixty-seven. Thrust into the revolutionary times surrounding Oliver Cromwell’s execution of King Charles I, Gerrard … Continue reading →

Today we recall and venerate Crazy Horse – the visionary, legendary, almost mythical Native American warrior leader of the Oglala Lakota Sioux – who was betrayed by friends then assassinated in custody one hundred and thirty-four years ago today. Fucked … Continue reading →

Today we recall the heroic escape to freedom of the great Frederick Douglass, America’s first black leader of true national stature, whose struggle from his slave roots in Maryland to successful published author just seven years later captivated the world … Continue reading →

Today we recall the extraordinary and accomplished life of W.E.B. Du Bois, the foremost champion of equal rights for blacks in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, who died forty-eight years ago today at the … Continue reading →

Today we recall the brief, peculiar and tragic life of Thomas Chatterton – English poet, forger of medieval poetry and proto-Romantic – who, aged just seventeen years and nine months old, poisoned himself with arsenic 241 years ago rather than … Continue reading →

Twenty-two years ago today, Huey P. Newton – revolutionary, agitator, rhetorician, co-founder and Minister of Defense of the Black Panther Party – was shot and killed when a drug deal went wrong. He was forty-seven years old. After his glory … Continue reading →

  Throughout his all too short but trailblazing life, death had been his central artistic theme – and seventy-five years ago today on 19th August 1936 at the age of thirty-eight, the Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca met … Continue reading →

Today we remember the extraordinary and explosive life of Dambudzo Marechera, the Zimbabwean ‘enfant terrible of African literature’ who – twenty-four years ago today – died homeless, penniless and sick from AIDS on the streets of Harare, at the age … Continue reading →

Today we celebrate the social reformer, prophet and science fiction writer, H. G. Wells, who died sixty-five years ago on this day aged 79. Probably best remembered for his visionary novels The Invisible Man and The War of the Worlds, … Continue reading →

One hundred and eighty-four years ago today, William Blake died as he had lived,  in poverty and obscurity. What can we say about this visionary, mystic, prophet, poet, painter, engraver, and World Artist? The criminal neglect that one of the greatest-evers … Continue reading →

It can be surprising to discover that so thoroughly indoctrinated were the Germans under Hitler’s Nazis that their cruelty towards non-Nazis did not halt abruptly in May 1945, as Prussians, Bavarians, Saxons, Hohernzollerns alike awoke from their collective psychosis. Instead … Continue reading →

Ninety-four years ago today at 3.05am in Butte, Montana, six masked men burst into the boarding house room of labour leader Frank Little, pulled him out of his bed, beat him, tied him to the bumper of a car, dragged … Continue reading →