August 18

1774 – Meriwether Lewis (d.1809) was an American explorer, soldier, politician, and public administrator, best known for his role as the leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, also known as the Corps of Discovery, with William Clark.

Their mission was to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase, establish trade with, and sovereignty over the natives near the Missouri River, and claim the Pacific Northwest and Oregon Country for the United States before European nations. They also collected scientific data, and information on indigenous nations. President Thomas Jefferson appointed him Governor of Upper Louisiana in 1806. He died of gunshot wounds in what was either a murder or suicide, in 1809.

Lewis had no formal education until he was 13 years of age, but during his time in Georgia he enhanced his skills as a hunter and outdoorsman. He would often venture out in the middle of the night in the dead of winter with only his dog to go hunting. Even at an early age, he was interested in natural history, which would develop into a lifelong passion.

The two-year exploration by Lewis and Clark was the first transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by the United States. When they returned to Washington DC, they had an immense amount of information, plus plant and animal specimens. They demonstrated that it was possible to travel overland to the Pacific Ocean. The success of their journeyed strengthened the American concept of “Manifest destiny”, the idea that the USA was destined to reach all the way across North America from Atlantic to Pacific.

Meriwether Lewis seems to have been stereotypically gay, at least by modern standards. When he worked as Thomas Jefferson‘s secretary, he was a noted dandy who wore the latest fashions and hair style; very metrosexual. He was also kind of ”queenie”: gossipy, edgy, excitable, temperamental.

Lewis was never married or showed any interest in women. He was well-built, handsome, and a genuine American hero, but he preferred the company of men. Something about his personality sent women screaming in the other direction. At 35-years-old, he described himself as a ”musty, fusty, rusty old bachelor”. ”Bachelor” was a code word for gay even in the early 19th century.

Lewis’s letters and journals reveal a man profoundly uncomfortable with women. When writing about Native-American women, Lewis seems positively repulsed, especially by the naked Clatsop women on the Pacific Coast "who exposed their bubbies and battery of Venus for the world to see."

However, Lewis wrote detailed observations of the Nez Perce men, noting that they were"hardy, strong, athletic and active". That’s four glowing adjectives!

In the historical novel, I Should Be Extremely Happy In Your Company (2003), Brian Hall uses the premise that Lewis was gay and had unrequited love for Clark. Lewis’s suicide in 1809 adds to the conjecture. Many queer people have experienced the haunting loneliness that comes with certain social ostracism if their gayness would become known. What better explanation of Lewis’s tragic death?

On September 3, 1809, Lewis set out for Washington, D.C., where he hoped to resolve issues regarding the denied payment of drafts he had drawn against the War Department while serving as governor of the Louisiana Territory, leaving him in ruinous debt. After the expedition, he had started to drink heavily and use opium.

Lewis stopped at an inn on the Natchez Trace about 70 miles from Nashville on October 10, 1809. In the early morning of October 11, the innkeeper’s wife heard gunshots. Servants found Lewis badly injured from multiple gunshot wounds to his head and stomach. He bled out on his buffalo hide robe and died shortly after sunrise.

Lewis may have committed suicide that morning because Clark had recently gotten married. Lewis was already severely depressed after their trip and never fully readjusted to life back in civilization.

There are intriguing hints in his journals that Lewis had a much more intense feeling of comradeship for Clark than Clark did for him.

When Jefferson asked him to lead the expedition, Lewis wrote to Clark:

1721 – Germany: Catherina Margaretha Linck is executed for female sodomy. She was a Prussian woman who for most of her adult life presented herself as a man named Anastasius Lagrantius Rosenstengel. She married 18-year-old Catharina Margaretha Mühlhahn, and, based on their sexual activity together (court records detail their sexual activities), was convicted of sodomy and executed by order of King Frederick William I. Linck’s execution was the last for lesbian sexual activity in Europe and an anomaly for its time. Linck’s story was the subject of a play, Executed For Sodomy: The Life of Catharina Linck, performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2013.

1852 – Guglielmo Plüschow (d.1930), born Wilhelm Plüschow was a German photographer who moved to Italy and became known for his nude photos of local youths, predominantly males (but also young and rather androgynous looking girls).

Plüschow was the cousin of Wilhelm von Gloeden, who, despite taking up nude photography later than Plüschow, soon overshadowed him. Plüschow was several times at odds with the law and charged with corruption of minors. Today, his photography is recognised for its artistic merits, even though it is generally considered somewhat inferior to von Gloeden's on account of his less graceful handling of lighting and the sometimes strangely stilted poses of his models. His photographs are more erotic and less 'artistic' than von Gloeden's.

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Not much is known about Plüschow's early life, except that he was born in Wismar as the eldest of seven brothers and sisters. His father Friedrich Carl Eduard Plüschow was an illegitimate child of Friedrich Ludwig von Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the family home was Schloss Plüschow.

In the early 1870s, he moved to Rome and changed his first name from 'Wilhelm' to its Italian equivalent 'Guglielmo'. Initially making a living as a wine merchant, he soon turned to male and female nude photography. Later he also worked in Naples, among others doing contract work like taking pictures of Nino Cesarini, the young lover of Baron Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen at the latter's house Villa Lysis on Capri.

Nino Cesarini
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In 1902, Plüschow was charged with 'common procuration' and 'seduction of minors' and had to spend eight months in jail. Another scandal followed in 1907: Plüschow was arrested for his portrayal of a nude minor twelve-year old boy, after which he 'converted' to photographing landscapes. He never stopped producing the erotic images, but learned to be discreet. In 1910 Plüschow left Italy for good and returned to Berlin.

1906 – The master of "poetic realism," Marcel Carné (d.1996) was a prodigy who created some of the defining films of French cinema from 1936 until 1945, including the Dadaist comedy-thriller Drôle de drame (1937; American title: Bizarre Bizarre); the fatalistic melodrama Quai des brumes (1938; American title: Port of Shadows); the intricate, flashback-structured tragedy Le jour se lève (1939), the medieval allegory Les Visiteurs du soir (1942), and his masterpiece, the magnificent theatrical epic Les Enfants du paradis (1945; American title: Children of Paradise).

Working with a powerful team of collaborators (the poet Jacques Prévert as scenarist, the designer Alexandre Trauner, the composers Maurice Jaubert and Joseph Kosma, the editor Henri Rust, and the cinematographer Roger Hubert), Carné provided the French cinema with some of its most emblematic images, including Michele Morgan with trenchcoat and beret walking through the fog in Port of Shadows, Jean Gabin waiting for the police alone in his attic room in Le jour se léve, and the mime sequences, with Jean-Louis Barrault's lovesick Baptiste pining for Arletty's statuesque Garance, in Children of Paradise.

Carné's last feature film, Le Merveilleuse visite (1974), about a beautiful young man who turns out to be an angel visiting Earth, is an allegory in which male beauty is used as an indicator of innocence. A man noted for his generosity and sensitivity, in his private life Carné tended to place personal relationships above political considerations: on the sets of Les Visiteurs du soir and Children of Paradise, there were artists who would later be tried for collaborating with the Nazis, as well as artists who were members of the Underground resistance and Jews in hiding who were given shelter.

During the 1970s, however, Carné issued several statements to the press indicating that he wished the openness of the post-Stonewall era had been available to him earlier in his career. Although he regretted that he had not infused his work with a political consciousness, he believed that his partiality to themes of impossible romance derived from his acute awareness of the societal oppression of homosexuals.

He was an outspoken champion of filmmakers such as Pier Paolo Pasolini and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who politicized questions of gender and sexual orientation. Although his career was uneven, Carné will be remembered, above all, for Children of Paradise. The latter, indisputably one of the classics of French cinema, was recently voted one of the greatest films in French history by a poll of French film critics in the year 2000.

1927 – Ricardo J. Brown (d.1999) was an American journalist who wrote one memorable book: The Evening Crowd at Kirmser's: A Gay Life in the 1940s. which was published posthumously.

Brown was born near St. Paul, Minnesota, and was in high school when he realized that he was gay. He moved to Greenwich Village in New York, but was upset by the openly gay culture and joined the U.S. Navy. He was discharged in 1945 after revealing his homosexual orientation to his commanding officer.

Returning to St. Paul, he looked for other people like himself and discovered Kirmser's, a small neighborhood bar owned by a German immigrant couple. Working-class customers frequented the bar during the day, but at night it was the unofficial meeting place of the gay community.

Brown writes of various customers, including queen Bette Boop; his friend Dale, who lost his job when someone told his employer that he was gay; Flaming Youth, a middle-aged man whose nickname of earlier years had stuck; and Dickie Grant, a gentle young man who was imprisoned for writing bad checks and was murdered there.

1943 – Leon Treadway, a mental health counselor, religious layworker, and gay rights activist, has been involved with most of the social, political, philanthropic, religious and educational organizations serving the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender (GLBT) community of Minneapolis and St. Paul since the mid-1970s.

Treadway was born in Oklahoma. After serving briefly in the army during the early 1960s, he earned a B.A. degree in Psychology (1968) and a M.Ed degree in Counseling and Student Personnel Administration (1970) from the University of Delaware. In the early 1970s, he pursued a Ph.D in Counseling and Counsellor Education from Purdue University and worked at the Crisis Center in Lafayette, Indiana, and as the executive director of the Open Door Crisis Center in Indiana, Pennsylvania. Treadway moved to the Twin Cities in 1975 and found work in the mental health field and as a consultant to various health, educational, religious, and youth groups.

Among the task forces and councils on which Leo Treadway has served are the Governor's Task Force on Gay and Lesbian Minnesotans, the Governor's Task Force on Prejudice and Violence, the Minnesota Task Force for Gay and Lesbian Youth, and the Gay and Lesbian Community Action Council. Treadway was an adult leader in the Lesbian and Gay Youth Together organization, participated in the North Star Project (needs assessment of the GLBT community), worked as a consultant to the Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools on issues affecting gay teens, and worked for passage of gay rights ordinances in St. Paul (1970s-1990s). Treadway also has served on the boards of directors of two foundations: the Headwaters Fund and the Philanthrofund Foundation.

Treadway has been involved with several religious organizations working with and on behalf of the GLBT community. These include the Lesbian and Gay Interfaith Council, Lutherans Concerned/North America, the Minnesota Council of Churches, and as the ministry associate of Wingspan, the ministry to and with gay persons of the St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church of St. Paul (1982-1992).

As a health and counseling professional, Treadway also has been active in several AIDS organizations such as the Minnesota Alliance Against AIDS, the NAMES Project (quilt memorial), and the Youth and AIDS Project centered at the University of Minnesota. Treadway also has given presentations at numerous workshops and conventions, and has written on topics of concern to the GLBT community. As a result, these papers, along with the other background materials collected by Treadway, form an integral part of his collection.

1948 – James Jones is a retired Church of England bishop. He was the Bishop of Liverpool.

The son of a military man, he was taught at the Duke of York's Royal Military school, Dover, and Exeter University and Alsager College, Keele, where he gained a PGCE in drama and religious education.

Following a teaching stint in Sevenoaks, he was a television producer for Scripture Union, a worldwide Christian evangelical movement, and later worked as a visiting media studies lecturer at Trinity College, Bristol.

He was then a curate, then associate vicar of Christ Church in the Diocese of Bristol. Jones was visiting lecturer in media studies at Trinity College, Bristol and, from 1990 to 1994, the vicar of Emmanuel Church, South Croydon in the Diocese of Southwark and the Bishop of Southwark's examining chaplain. In 1994, he became Suffragan Bishop of Hull in the Diocese of York, a post he held until 1998 when he was appointed the 7th Bishop of Liverpool.

He gained wide publicity when he urged people to give up carbon for Lent instead of the more traditional fare of chocolate and alcohol. While the scheme won plaudits for its practical simplicity, what has garnered rather more headlines was Jones's about face regarding homosexuality and the church.

Jones is an Evangelical and was one of the group of anti-gay bishops who signed a letter opposing Rowan Williams' decision not to block the appointment of gay clergyman Jeffrey John as Bishop of Reading. In 2008, Jones apologised for opposing the gay cleric.

In an essay, Making Space for Truth and Grace, he argued that the Bible may support same-sex relationships and uses the bonds between Jesus and John the Apostle and Jonathan and David as examples.

"He is a complex man and not easy to read," says Mike Homfray, a former member of the Merseyside Gay and Lesbian Christian Network. "We met while I was working on the Theology of Friendship report, which he refers to in his essay. I've always felt that if he changed his mind, he would be a great advocate for gay rights."

The bishop was famed for his passion when championing causes, chiefly the environment, and is credited for his role in persuading US evangelicals to take climate change seriously, although he regularly talks about gun crime and regeneration, two issues that are highly pertinent in his diocese.

On 28 January 2013 it was announced that Jones would retire as Bishop of Liverpool on his 65th birthday on 18 August.

1950 – Randal MacDonnell (d.2019) was an architectural historian who styled himself Count Randal MacDonnell of the Glens.

MacDonnell was not too bothered by how others saw him. He regarded his only tweed jacket, his permanent choice of apparel, to have been a lifetime investment and he subscribed to the 18th century view that real grandees only took a bath once a year, whether they needed to or not. The olfactory consequences earned him the nickname the Count de Camembert. Moreover, he lived openly as a homosexual in conservative Catholic Ireland.

When asked by a friend how he could possibly survive in Dublin on so little money MacDonnell replied: "Dear boy, when I walk down Grafton Street I do so wearing an imaginary coronet." The coronet in question derived from his claim to the ancient title of The MacDonnell of the Glens, in which he persisted to the great annoyance of the Earls of Antrim and other MacDonnells with legitimate claims to ancient Irish titles.

MacDonnell claimed his comital title had its origins in the Holy Roman Empire and his preferred form of address was "My Lord Count". But those versed in the world of ancient Irish genealogy observed that he had originally arrived in Ireland sporting the title Baron Randal MacDonnell of the Isles, so few took his claims seriously.

Randal MacDonnell was born somewhere in England, though his exact origins remained a mystery due to his habit of obfuscation and invention. His mother Kathleen (nee Dolan) was one of the first women employed as a continuity announcer on radio.

MacDonnell often claimed his father worked on the early episodes of Coronation Street, but in what capacity remains unclear. So too does Randal's education: as the mood took him, he would lay claim to having attended Eton or Stonyhurst. What is certain is that MacDonnell arrived at Trinity College Dublin to read law but, preferring the Buttery Bar to the lecture theatre, he failed to get a degree.

On the rare occasions he turned up for lectures he did so wearing a kilt, and on other days he could be seen cycling into college wearing the mantle of the Knights of Malta, rumoured to have been hired from a theatrical costumiers. On one occasion in the late 1960s he and a group of like-minded students hired a helicopter to attend the College Races, a sporting event attended by guests including the octogenarian President Eamon de Valera. The helicopter hovered over the sports field while MacDonnell slid down a rope. Even the near-blind de Valera could not fail to notice that he was wearing his kilt in the traditional manner as he landed in the presidential box.

He claimed to have been Noel Coward's private secretary, and his capacity for name-dropping could reach Olympian proportions. Sentences regularly began with "as Orson Welles/Noel Coward/ Debo Devonshire/ the King of Greece", or whoever took his fancy, "said to me &hellip"

Despite his claims to past grandeur, his financial situation remained precarious, often requiring the adoption of ingenious strategies to keep a roof over his head.

MacDonnell had a lucky break when he was engaged by his friend, the Guinness heir Garech Browne, to advise on the restoration of his house, Luggala, in Co Wicklow. Things went splendidly until a blistering row broke out between the two friends over the disappearance from the house of items of Georgian silver and other valuable chattels.

In an effort to avoid the scandal surrounding the "silver teapot affair", as it became known, in about 2005 MacDonnell decamped to Prague, where he set up home in a room in a crumbling Baroque palace.Later he moved to Tangier in Morocco, a city which easily accommodated his peculiar type of genius, and where he found a whole new audience for his stories. On one occasion his entertaining conversation caused the distinguished historian Norman Stone to miss a boat departing Tangier for Spain.

MacDonnell died penniless, broken in health and, though he never showed it, in spirit. His last years were spent living in terrible conditions among Tangier's poor in a tiny rented room in the Kasbah.

1965 – Bob Harper is an American personal trainer and author. He appears on the American television series The Biggest Loser.

Harper was born in Nashville, Tennessee. After reading the book Skinny Bitch, Harper became a vegetarian. In 2010, he then became a vegan for a year. That same year, PETA voted him sexiest male vegetarian of the year. Harper stopped following a vegan diet in 2011 and now eats animal products again due to wanting "something more."

Harper has worked as a personal trainer for celebrity clients, including Jennifer Jason Leigh. In 1999, he was cast as an extra in Melissa Etheridge's hit video for the song "Angels Would Fall" from her album Breakdown. He is featured as a trainer on the United States version of The Biggest Loser reality television series. He has been a trainer on the NBC show since 2004.In addition to working on the show, Harper has appeared in several Biggest Loser DVD workouts. Harper also appeared on the first three seasons of the Australian version of the show. In addition to his appearances, speaking dates, and writing duties, Harper still teaches regular classes in Los Angeles and works as a yoga instructor.

Harper publicly came out as gay in the seventh episode of the fifteenth season of The Biggest Loser, while talking to a contestant who was having difficulty telling his parents about his sexuality. Harper revealed he came out to his parents at 17, but that this was his first time ever addressing his sexuality publicly in his career. The episode aired on November 26, 2013.

1983 – Mika, born Michael Holbrook Penniman, Jr, is a British singer-songwriter.

After recording his first extended play, Dodgy Holiday EP, Mika released his first full-length studio album, Life in Cartoon Motion. In 2007. Life in Cartoon Motion sold more than 5.6 million copies worldwide and helped Mika win a Brit Award—winning Best British Breakthrough act, and receive a Grammy Award nomination. In 2006, Mika started up his company, Dodgy Holiday Tours Limited. Two years later Mika released his second extended play, Songs for Sorrow, of which limited edition copies are now sold out worldwide. In 2009 Mika released his second studio album, The Boy Who Knew Too Much. Finishing his worldwide tour, Mika started writing and recording material for his third album, The Origin of Love, stating it will be "more simplistic pop, less layered than the last one". The album will be released on 16 September 2012.

Mika was born in Beirut, the third of five children born to a Lebanese mother and an American father. When he was a year old his family was forced to leave war-torn Lebanon and moved to Paris. At age seven, he wrote his first song, which he describes as an "awful" piano instrumental called "Angry".

The family moved to London when he was nine years old. There, he attended the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, where he experienced severe bullying. He also had problems with dyslexia. In response to these experiences Mika was home-schooled by his mother at the age of 12, for six to eight months. He then attended St Philip's School in Kensington, where he was the head of the Schola Cantorum (the St. Philip's Choir). Later he attended Westminster School and the Royal College of Music, which he left to record his first album at Casablanca Records. He has also slightly altered his given name, Mica, changing the "c" to a "k" because he was frustrated by how often people would mispronounce it.

Mika denied allegations that he is steering clear of sexual taboos in order to appeal to the US market, pointing to the song "Billy Brown", which is about a married man who has an affair with another man. He is quoted as saying, "If I was worried about sexual taboos I certainly wouldn't have made the record I made. It has nothing to do with that. It has more to do with self-respect." In an interview in the US gay magazine Out he stated that "there is a way of discussing sexuality without using labels."

In a September 2009 interview in Gay & Night Mika commented on his sexuality: "I've never ever labelled myself. But having said that; I've never limited my life, I've never limited who I sleep with... Call me whatever you want. Call me bisexual, if you need a term for me..." Later he stated in an interview with This Is London "I consider myself label-less because I could fall in love with anybody - literally - any type, any body. I'm not picky." In an August 2012 interview with the magazine Instinct, the singer confirmed that he is gay.

1988 – The Center for Disease Control announced that syphilis and hepatitis B among gay men decreased dramatically since 1982, but had increased among heterosexuals.

1990 – President George H. W. Bush signs the Ryan White Care Act, a federally funded program for people living with AIDS. Ryan White (1971 – 1990), an Indiana teenager, contracted AIDS in 1984 through a hemophilia treatment. After being barred from attending high school because of his HIV-positive status, Ryan White becomes a well-known activist for AIDS research.

1993 – Sicily: Giuseppe Mandanici, 33, was shot three times but survived the attack. Police believed it to be an act of random violence until they discovered that his father had paid a hit man $1 million lire (approx. $700 US) to kill his son because he could not come to terms with his son’s homosexuality.

1999 – Hackers re-routed hate monger Fred Phelps’ anti-gay web site, godhatesfags.com to godlovesfags.com.

2009 – Lateisha Green, a transgender woman, was killed by Dwight DeLee in 2008. DeLee is found guilty of manslaughter in the first degree as a hate crime. DeLee is the second person in the U.S. to be convicted of a hate crime for killing a transgender person.