Six degrees
Johnny Appleseed Day will be celebrated in parts of America on Thursday, commemorating a homeless tycoon who roamed the country buying up land and planting fruit trees. Appleseed, a vegetarian, is fondly remembered for his kind deeds and conservation efforts. Going barefoot and sleeping rough even during the winter, the nurseryman believed that each deprivation he suffered on Earth would be handsomely rewarded in heaven, because that is what was taught by the Swedenborgian Church, established by Emanuel Swedenborg ...
Born in Stockholm, Sweden, Swedenborg (1688-1772) was a scientist until the age of 56, at which point he began to experience visions and claimed the Lord had enabled him to visit heaven and hell and to talk with angels, demons and other spirits. Unsurprisingly, his theological work elicited a range of responses, influencing several historical figures, among them British poet and artist William Blake ...
Rejected as insane by 18th-century society, Blake was largely unrecognised until a century after his death. An advocate of sexual and racial equality, Blake taught his illiterate bride, Catherine, to read and write and she proved to be a devoted assistant until his death, at the age of 69. The singularity of his work makes it difficult to classify but, for historian Peter Marshall, Blake was one of the forerunners of modern anarchism ...
Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing theories that consider the state to be unnecessary, harmful or otherwise undesirable. A surge of popular interest in anarchism occurred in the West during the 1970s and can be largely attributed to the rise of the punk rock movement, as embodied by bands such as Crass, who were politically motivated, and the more frivolous Sex Pistols ...
Although the Sex Pistols' initial career lasted only 2? years and produced just four singles and one studio album, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols, they are regarded as one of the most influential acts in the history of popular music. The group got one of their first gigs supporting The 101ers, a band fronted by Joe Strummer ...
The former gravedigger went on to join The Clash (above; Strummer is far right), who, in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked as No30 on its list of the 100 greatest artists of all time. After the group disbanded in 1986, Strummer's music career continued until his death in 2002, aged 50, from an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. His last band, The Mescaleros, enjoyed commercial success: several of its songs appear in major films such as Mr & Mrs Smith. The song used as the theme to HBO series John From Cincinnati is the first track from the Mescaleros' album Global A Go-Go - it is called Johnny Appleseed.
