Born in 1960 – Chuck D, American artist.

“I spread the message of hope and of unity. That’s what gets me up in the morning. I can tell you what is wrong, but I can’t tell you how to fix it. I’m a raptivist, not a politician. I deal in hope.”

Born in 1860 – Mary Vaux Walcott, American artist and naturalist.

Below: Red Maple (Acer rubrum). Watercolor, 1920

Born in 1960 – Richard Linklater, American filmmker.

“You learn from everybody.”

Previously: Linklater

Born in 1805 – Alexis de Tocqueville, French historian and philosopher.

He wrote in 1835, “In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them.”

Previously, Tocqueville here and here.

Born in 1902 – Albert Namatjira, Australian Aboriginal painter.

Above: Mount Hermannsburg, c.1950

Below: Namatjira with his father Jonathon, his wife Rubina and their grandchildren

Born in 1768 – Charlotte Corday, French assassin of Jean-Paul Marat.

“I killed one man to save one hundred thousand.”

Above: Jules Charles Aviat’s 1880 painting “Charlotte Corday and Marat”

Born in 1865 – Karl Blossfeldt, German photographer.

Above: Feverfew (Chrysanthemum parthenium), 1928.

Born in 1870 (O.S.) –Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik communist party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union.

“Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views…The party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views.”

Born in 1867 – Cy Young, American baseball player and manager.

In 1871, The Paris Commune was formally established in Paris.

From Encyclopedia Britannica: “Among those in the new government were the so-called Jacobins, who followed in the French Revolutionary tradition of 1793 and wanted the Paris Commune to control the Revolution; the Proudhonists, socialists who supported a federation of communes throughout the country; and the Blanquistes, socialists who demanded violent action. The program that the Commune adopted, despite its internal divisions, called for measures reminiscent of 1793 (end of support for religion, use of the Revolutionary calendar) and a limited number of social measures (10-hour workday, end of work at night for bakers).”

Two months later the Commune was suppressed by the national French Army during La semaine sanglante, The Bloody Week. Between 6,000 and 7,000 Communards (some estimates tend as high as 20,000) were confirmed to have been killed in battle or executed. Debates over the rule of the Commune influenced on the ideas of Marx and Engels, who described it as the first example of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Above: Communards toppling the statue of Napoleon in the Place Vendôme.