April 4

[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]| [{(o)}]|[{(o)}]

1785 – The German writer Bettina von Arnim was born on this date (d.1859). The Countess of Arnim was born Elisabeth Catharina Ludovica Magdalena Brentano, was a writer, publisher, composer, singer, visual artist, an illustrator, as well as patron of young talent and a social activist. Bettina is best known for the company she kept. She claimed deep friendships with Goethe, Beethoven, and Pückler and tried to foster an artistic union between them. Many leading composers of the time, such as Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt, Johanna Kinkel, and Johannes Brahms, admired her for her spirit and her talents. Her composition style was unconventional, in that it molded and melded her favorite features of the old—folk music and historic themes—with unusual harmonies, phrase lengths and improvisations that became synonymous with the music of the time.

No one knows exactly what passed between this willowy creature out of Sturm-und-Drang German romanticism and the poet Karoline von Günderrode. She devoted one of her books to this intense friendship, but since the letters she published as being from Goethe to herself have turned out to be largely fictitious, how much can we believe?

Bettina and Karoline had apparently been lovers. When Bettina overheard a handsome young man talking of his love for Karoline, she jealously reprimanded him for daring to speak of the poet as if he had a right to her love. So pronounced was her outrage that all present were aware that she was speaking as if she had a right to Karoline's love. Shortly thereafter the two women quarreled, and Karoline, selecting a beautiful, romantic spot, unobtrusively blew her brains out. She was 26.

Editor's note: Wikipedia has a different account of why she killed herself (it was because her husband was dying) and it was by stabbing herself with a dagger.

 Antony Tudor (R) rehearsing.

Born William Cook, the Cockney-born Tudor, who discovered dance accidentally, began dancing professionally with Marie Rambert in 1928, becoming general assistant for her Ballet Club the next year. A precocious choreographer, at age twenty-three he created for her dancers Cross Garter'd, then Lysistrata, The Planets and other works at the little Mercury Theatre, and his two most famous and revolutionary, Jardin Aux Lilas (Lilac Garden) and Dark Elegies, before the age of thirty, himself dancing main roles.

In 1938, he founded the London Ballet with Rambert members, including his future lifelong partner, Hugh Laing, Andreé Howard and Agnes de Mille, but, with the onset of World War II, in 1940 was invited with them to New York, joining the reorganised Ballet Theater. Chase's company was later to become the American Ballet Theatre, with which Tudor was closely associated for the rest of his life. He was resident choreographer with Ballet Theater for ten years, restaging some of his earlier works but also setting the new works, his great Pillar of Fire, Romeo and Juliet, Dim Lustre and Undertow, on that company by the end of the war.

Retiring from dancing in 1950, he headed the faculty of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, taught at the Juilliard School, and was artistic director for the Royal Swedish Ballet. He choreographed three works for the New York City Ballet. Tudor continued his teaching career as Professor of Ballet Technique at the Department of Dance, University of California from 1973, rejoining American Ballet Theater in 1974 as associate artistic director, creating The Leaves Are Fading and Tiller In the Fields, his last major work, in 1978. With Laing he continued seasonal residence in Laguna Beach, California.

1932 – Clive Davis is a record producer who has won five Grammy Awards and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He was the president of Columbia Records from 1967 to 1973 before founding Arista Records in 1975. He created J Records in 2000 and is currently the chief creative officer at Sony Music Entertainment.

Davis is best known for launching the careers of Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow, Carlos Santana, Jennifer Hudson and Whitney Houston. At Arista, Houston became one of the best-selling artists in music history. Over the years, Davis also signed notables like Janis Joplin, Dionne Warwick, Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd and Aerosmith, helping to establish rock, pop and folk trends in the music industry for decades.

In 2013 Davis publicly came out as bisexual in his autobiography, “The Soundtrack of My Life.”

In the book, he admits to having his first sexual experience with a man in the 1970s. “Was I nervous? Absolutely,” he writes. “Did the heavens open up? No. But it was satisfying.”

On the daytime talk show Katie, he told host Katie Couric that he hoped his coming out would lead to "greater understanding" of bisexuality." Since 2004, Davis has been in a relationship with a man, which followed a 14-year relationship with a male doctor.

1932 – Anthony Perkins, American actor born (d.1992); an Academy Award-nominated American stage and screen actor known for his role as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and its three sequels.

Perkins made his film debut in The Actress (1953). He received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year - Actor and an Academy Award nomination for his second film, Friendly Persuasion (1956).

Following this, he released three pop music albums in 1957 and 1958 on Epic and RCA as "Tony Perkins". His single "Moon-Light Swim" was a hit in the United States.

Perkins was cast as Norman Bates in the Alfred Hitchcock-directed film Psycho (1960). The film was a critical and commercial success, and gained Perkins international fame for his performance as the homicidal owner of the Bates Motel. Perkins' performance would garner him the Best Actor Award from the International Board of Motion Picture Reviewers

Perkins reprised the role of Norman Bates in three sequels to Psycho. The first, Psycho II (1983), was a box office success more than 20 years after the original film. He then starred in and directed Psycho III in 1986, but refused to reprise his role as Bates in the failed television pilot Bates Motel. He did play Bates in the following made-for-cable Psycho IV: The Beginning in 1990, over which he had much creative control although he was turned down for director.

Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins

Perkins was bisexual, having had affairs with a number of men, including 1950s and 1960s film stars Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, dancer Rudolph Nureyev, composer/lyricist Stephen Sondheim and dancer-choreographer Grover Dale, with whom Perkins had a six-year relationship prior to his marriage to Berry Berenson. He claimed to have been exclusively Gay until his late 30s, when he met actress Victoria Principal.

He said of his bisexual life: "I had wild fantasies, but my erotic experience was mostly solitary. Along the way I'd had homosexual encounters, but that kind of sex always felt unreal to me and unsatisfying. And I had never had sex with a woman - the very thought of it terrified me."

He said of his battle with AIDS; "I have learned more about love, selflessness and human understanding from the people I have met in this great adventure in the world of AIDS than I ever did in the cutthroat, competitive world in which I spent my life."

Perkins died at age 60 from complications from AIDS. One day before the ninth anniversary of his death, Perkins' widow, Berenson, died on American Airlines Flight 11, during the September 11, 2001 attacks. He had two sons: actor Osgood "Oz" Perkins and musician, Elvis Perkins.

1937 – Bob Bauman is a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Maryland's 1st congressional district. Bauman was a prominent conservative advocate in the House, but lost re-election in 1980 following a political scandal involving male prostitution.

In Congress, Bauman established a reputation as a staunch conservative, often criticizing the state of morality in the United States. He was a founding member of several conservative activist groups, including the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) and the American Conservative Union (ACU), where he served both as national chairman.Bauman was also known for his exceptional knowledge of parliamentary procedure, and was considered a rising star in the Republican party in the late 1970s.

A Roman Catholic, he was married to Carol Dawson, with whom he had four children.

On October 3, 1980, while running for re-election, Bauman was charged for attempting to solicit sex from a 16-year-old male prostitute.

After the charges were made public, Bauman said he was suffering from alcoholism and entered himself into a court-supervised rehabilitation program, which, upon successful completion, resulted in the charges being dropped. Bauman stated he would continue his re-election campaign, and apologized to voters for his indiscretions.

Bauman was defeated by Democrat Roy Dyson on November 5, 1980. Dyson was not considered a serious contender for the seat before the charges were filed against Bauman. In 1982, Bauman again ran for the nomination for the House seat he had lost, but withdrew from the race before primary election day.

Bauman later wrote an autobiography, The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative, which was published in 1986.

1938 – Germany: The Gestapo decrees that men convicted of homosexuality will be sent to the concentration camps. Between 1933 and 1945 when WWII ended, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals; 50,000 were sentenced and sent to prison. Between 5,000 and 15,000 were in concentration camps. After WWII many remained in jail until 1968 because homosexuality was still a crime in Germany under Paragraph 175 which as not repealed until 1994.

1963 – Graham Norton, Irish talk show host, born; an Irish actor, comedian and television presenter. . He achieved fame as a broadcaster on Britain's Channel 4 and also through his role as Father Noel Furlong in the critically acclaimed Irish television series Father Ted. Though he only appeared in three episodes, Norton's performance as Father Noel proved extremely popular with viewers.

Norton is out Gay, and is one of the UK's most famous Gay personalities. In his autobiography, So Me, Graham Norton noted that it was "easier to be Gay than Protestant in Ireland"

In January 2009 he made his stage debut in a West End revival of La Cage Aux Folles at the Playhouse Theatre.

1974 – In New York City, more than 1,000 people gather in Greenwich Village to demonstrate support for a gay and lesbian municipal rights ordinance currently under debate in the City Council. The bill had been strongly opposed by, among others, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and the Uniformed Fire Officers Association.

1976 – Pope Paul VI publicly denies press reports that he has had affairs with men.

1979 – Heath Ledger, born in Perth, Western Australia (d.2008), was an Australian television and film actor. After performing roles in Australian television and film during the 1990s, Ledger left his homeland for the United States in 1998 to develop his film career. His work encompassed nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and The Dark Knight (2008). In addition to acting, he produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.

He is included here for his legendary portrayal of Ennis Del Mar, the homosexual ranch worker, in Brokeback Mountain, for which Ledger won the 2005 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and the 2006 "Best Actor" award from the Australian Film Institute and was nominated for the 2005 Academy Award for Best Actor as well as the 2006 BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

Posthumously he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There, which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.

Ledger received numerous accolades for his critically acclaimed portrayal of the Joker in The Dark Knight, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards, for which he became the first actor to win an award posthumously, the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Ledger died on 22 January 2008, from an accidental "toxic combination of prescription drugs". A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his penultimate performance, as the Joker in The Dark Knight, his death coming during editing of the film and casting a shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $180 million production.

1968 – The civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on this date at a motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

1973 – Montana passes a new criminal code and keeps sodomy as a felony, but makes the act criminal only between persons of the same sex. The maximum penalty is reduced from life to 10 years.

1985 – Todrick Hall is an American singer, choreographer, and YouTuber. He gained national attention on the ninth season of the televised singing competition American Idol. Following this, he amassed a huge following on YouTube with viral videos including original songs, parodies, and skits. A documentary series about his video-making process titled Todrick aired on MTV in 2015.

Starting with season eight, Hall became a resident choreographer and occasional judge on RuPaul's Drag Race. From 2016 to 2017, Hall starred as Lola in Kinky Boots on Broadway. Later in 2017, he began appearances as Billy Flynn in Chicago on Broadway and the West End.

Todrick Hall was born on April 4, 1985, in Plainview, Texas, a farming community in the state's panhandle. He was raised by a single mother until she married when he was a teen, when he gained a brother and stepfather. Later the family would move to Dallas.

Hall is gay, and came out to his family when he was 15. At age 16, he began performing on weekends at the amusement park Six Flags Over Texas; it was the first time he combined singing and dancing. He also performed on cruises with Royal Caribbean, Holland America Line, and at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. Hall has said that his work ethic comes from the lack of opportunities he had in the entertainment industry as a black gay man.

1992 – Ricky Dillon is an American YouTube personality and singer. Over his ten years on YouTube, Dillon has amassed over 3.2 million subscribers on his channel, as well as more than 415 million views on his videos.

Dillon was born in North Carolina. Dillon attended high school at Hoover High School where he also marched in the band. Dillon then attended college at Auburn University to study film but dropped out after three years.

Dillon began his career on YouTube, uploading his first public video to his channel, PICKLEandBANANA, in 2009. Dillon also gained exposure due to the YouTube supergroup Our2ndLife where he, Connor Franta, JC Caylen, Kian Lawley, Trevi Moran and Sam Pottorff went on an international tour and amassed a total 2.7 million subscribers before the group broke up in December 2014. He is also partnered with Fullscreen and has participated in their InTour festival.

Dillon uploads original songs and covers, as well as music videos on his channel. He also starred in a scripted Sour Patch Kids series, titled Breaking Out.

In 2014, Dillon released his debut single, titled "Ordinary". Dillon's debut EP, titled RPD, was released on January 26, 2015. In July 2015, Dillon released his sophomore single titled "Beat". In an interview with People magazine at VidCon 2015, Dillon hinted towards a new personal song called "Gold", to be featured as one of the tracks on his second EP.

Dillon has mentioned in multiple interviews that Demi Lovato is a major influence to his musical career. He has covered several of her songs on his YouTube channel some of which were released to iTunes.

On December 1, 2015, Dillon announced the release of his debut album Gold, which was released on January 15, 2016.

[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]| [{(o)}]|[{(o)}]

[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]|[{(o)}]| [{(o)}]|[{(o)}]

We're not sure about his exact dates (no one is), so we'll choose today to tell you about the Queer Pharaoh Pepi II Neferkare who reigned from about 2278 BC to 2184 BC.

Pepi II was a pharaoh of the Sixth dynasty in Egypt's Old Kingdom. His throne name, Neferkare (Nefer-ka-Re), means "Beautiful is the Ka of Re." Neferkare succeeded to the throne at age six, after the death of Merenre I, and is generally credited with having the longest reign of any monarch in history at 94 years (c. 2278 BC - c. 2184 BC) although this figure has been disputed by some Egyptologists who favor a shorter reign of not much more than 64 years. That's still a pretty long reign. This quibbles are based on the complete absence of higher attested dates for Pepi beyond his Year after the 31st Count (Year 62 on a biannual cattle count).

If you're ever at the Brooklyn Museum of Art you can see a beautiful statue of Neferkare seated on his mother Queen Ankhenesmerire II's lap. Pepi II wears the royal headdress and a kilt and is shown at a much smaller scale than his mother. This difference in size is atypical because the king is usually shown larger than others. The difference in size may refer to the time period when his mother served as a regent. Alternatively the statue may depict Ankhenesmerire II as the divine mother.

What's interesting about Neferkare is a later story about him circa 1800 BC. Referred to now as "King Neferkare and General Sasenet," it talks about the king sneaking out of his palace in the middle of the night to visit his general Sasenet, who is thought to have been his lover. Kind of saucy, but what's really significant about the story is it's an example of a relationship between two adult men rather than between a man and boy as was often the case in the ancient world. This may be the earliest story of a homosexual relationship.