ARTHUR MAGAZINE ARCHIVE

July 4– Mao Dun
Famed radical Chinese writer, journalist, cultural critic.

JULY 4, 2009 HOLIDAYS AND FESTIVALS
*U.S.: Independence Day.
*Flag-burning day
*Hannibal, Missouri: Tom Sawyer Fence-Painting Day.

ALSO ON JULY 4 IN HISTORY…
1585 — English colonists land on Roanoke Island, New World.
1627 — Virginia Colony orders “scorched earth” policy for neighboring natives.
1776 — Liberty Bell rings, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: not all it’s cracked up to be.
1826 — New Harmony utopianists sign Declaration of Mental Independence.
1840 — “Calico Indians” rise up in 5-year-long Hudson Valley Anti-Rent Wars.
1845 — Henry David Thoreau takes up 26-month-long squat, Walden Pond, Mass.
1855 — Walt Whitman, age 36, self-publishes “Leaves of Grass.” Dismal sales.
1896 —Radical Chinese writer Mao Dun born, Tongxiang, Zhejiang, China.
1904 — Jazz great Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong born, New Orleans, Louisiana.
1905 — Radical anarchist geographer Elisée Reclus dies, Thourot, Belgium.
1928 — Black American beat poet Ted Joans born, riverboat near Cairo, Illinois.
1966 — LBJ signs U.S. Freedom of Information Act.
1980 — Anthropologist, cultural theorist Gregory Bateson dies, San Francisco.

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