October 18

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1663 – The French/Italian prince Prince Eugene of Savoy was born on this date (d.1736). Prince Eugene was one of the most successful military commanders in modern European history, rising to the highest offices of state at the Imperial court in Vienna.

Born in Paris to aristocratic Savoyard parents, Eugene grew up around the French court of King Louis XIV. Based on his poor physique and bearing, the Prince was initially prepared for a career in the church, but by the age of 19 he had determined on a military career. Rejected by Louis XIV for service in the French army, Eugene moved to Austria and transferred his loyalty to the Hapsburg Monarchy.

Little is known about Eugene's life before 1683. In his early boyhood Eugene belonged to what historians call a "small, effeminate set." Hostile anecdotal evidence of this period is supplied by the Duchess of Orléans who accused him of "homosexual antics" with lackeys and pages, calling him 'a slut' and declaring that 'he often played the woman with young people'. But her remarks about Eugene were made years later, and only then after he had severely mauled the armies of her brother-in-law, Louis XIV.

Eugene's childhood behaviour may have been a result his mother's lax household and her own failure to show any affection towards him.

Of related interest are a popular soldier's song of the period which that alluded to Eugene's voyage on the Rhine River with his friend, the Marquis de la Moussaye. When a storm broke out, the general dreaded the worst, but the Marquis consoled him with the words: "Our lives are safe/ For we are sodomites/ Destined to perish only by fire/ We shall land."

A comment made by Schulenberg in 1709 should probably read that the prince enjoyed "la petite debauche et des p[énis] au dela de tout," which means that he derived his sexual gratification from the virile members of others - that is, he was a botttom or a cocksucker. He was known as 'Madam l' Ancienne' (The Old Lady) to his contemporaries, and 'Mars without Venus' to his men.

1753 – Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, 1st Duke of Parma (d.1824) was a French lawyer and statesman during the French Revolution and the First Empire, best remembered as the author of the Napoleonic code, which still forms the basis of French civil law.

Throughout his career, his chief interest was in developing the principles of revolutionary jurisprudence. Although it is generally believed that he was solely responsible for legalizing in France same-sex relations between consenting adults in private, that is an oversimplification based on the irony that he himself was homosexual.

Before the French Revolution, sodomy had been a capital crime under royal legislation. The penalty was burning at the stake. Very few men, however, were ever actually prosecuted and executed for consensual sodomy (no more than five in the entire eighteenth century). Sodomites arrested by the police were more usually released with a warning or held in prison for (at most) a few weeks or months.

Cambacérès was one of the principal framers of the Napoléonic Code, which not only decriminalized sodomy in France but in every one of its colonies (and subsequently post-colonial freed countries).

Cambacérés sexuality was well known, and he was commonly called "Tante Urlurette," The triumverate of Napoleon, Cambacérés and Lebrun, in fact, was known as Hic, Haec and Hoc, Latin for "this one" in male, female and neuter genders, respectively.

Cambacérés, so it is told, was once late for an appointment with Napoleon and offered the excuse of having "been with a woman" to the annoyed emperor.

"Been with a woman?" Napoleon sniffed, "Next time tell her this: `Take your hat and cane and leave me.'"

1777 – Heinrich Von Kleist, the Romantic German novelist, poet, playwright, and philosopher was born on this date (d.1811).

He achieved in death what he could not in life: His works were taken seriously. None of his literary efforts had any real success during his short life time. Poverty-stricken and despondent, he killed himself in a suicide pact with a friend, a Frau Vogel, when he was 34. Kleinst, in death, became revered by his contemporaries.

His letters reveal him to have been homosexual. The letters to his friend Ernst von Pfuel are particularly passionate in their outpouring of love. "You are my Greek god, dear youth. I want to sleep with you, embrace you. When you bathe in Lake Thun, I stare at your magnificent body with the longing of a girl."

1865 – Logan Pearsall Smith (d.1946) was an American-born essayist and critic who became a British subject in 1913. Harvard and Oxford educated, he was known for his aphorisms and epigrams, and was an expert on 17th-century divines. His Words and Idioms made him an authority on correct English language usage. He wrote his autobiography, Unforgotten years, for which he may be best remembered.

Smith was born in Millville, New Jersey. He was the son of the prominent Quakers Robert Pearsall Smith and Hannah Whitall Smith and a descendant of James Logan, who was William Penn's secretary and the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania in the 18th century. His mother's family had become wealthy from its glass factories. He lived for a time as a boy in England. In his 1938 autobiography, Smith describes how in his youth he came to be a friend of Walt Whitman in the poet's latter years.

Pearsall attended The William Penn Charter School in Philadelphia, Haverford College, Harvard College, and the University of Berlin. Smith later studied at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1891. He settled in England after Oxford with occasional forays to continental Europe and became a British subject in 1913. He divided his time between Chelsea and a Tudor farmhouse near the Solent, called "Big Chilling".

Smith was an authority on the 17th century clergy. He was known for his aphorisms and epigrams, and his Trivia has been highly rated. He was a literary perfectionist and could take days refining his sentences. With Words and Idioms he became a recognised authority on the correct use of English. He is now probably most remembered for his autobiography Unforgotten Years (1938). He was much influenced by Walter Pater. His followers included Desmond MacCarthy, John Russell, R. C. Trevelyan, and Hugh Trevor-Roper. He was, in part, the basis for the character of Nick Greene / Sir Nicholas Greene in Virginia Woolf's Orlando.

Smith employed a succession of young "secretary/companions" to help him. This post was Cyril Connolly's first job in 1925 and he was to be strongly influenced by Smith. Robert Gathorne-Hardy succeeded Connolly in this post

1884 – Became Kabaka (king): Danieri Basammula-Ekkere Mwanga II Mukasa (1868-1903). He was Kabaka from 1884 until 1888 and from 1889 until 1897. He was the thirty-first (31st) Kabaka of Buganda (modern day Uganda), and a homosexual.

Mwanga II saw the greatest threat to his rule coming from the Christian missionaries who had gradually penetrated Buganda. His father had played-off the three religions; Catholics, Protestants and Muslims against each other. Mwanga II took a much more aggressive approach, expelling missionaries and insisting that Christian converts abandon their faith or face death.

On October 29, 1885, he had the incoming archbishop James Hannington murdered. Then between 1885 and 1887, over forty-five of the king's pages were put to death on the orders of Mwanga. The crime was failure to renounce their newly-found Christian beliefs and their refusal of the king's sexual demands. Twenty-two of the men, who had converted to Catholicism, were burned alive at Namugongo in 1886 and later became known as the Uganda Martyrs.

These murders and Mwanga's continued resistance alarmed the British, who backed a rebellion by Mwanga's half brother and defeated Mwanga at Mengo in 1888. However, Mwanga escaped and negotiated with the British. In exchange for handing over some of his sovereignty to the British East Africa Company, the British changed their backing to Mwanga, who swiftly removed his brother from the throne in 1889.

On August 27, 1894, Mwanga accepted for Buganda to become a Protectorate. However, on July 6, 1897, he declared War on the British and launched an attack, but was defeated. He fled into German East Africa (today it is the Republic of Tanzania), where he was arrested and interned.

Tenacious as he was, he escaped and returned to Buganda with a rebel army, but was again defeated. He was captured and in April 1899 was exiled to the Seychelles. While in exile, he was received into the Anglican Church, was baptized with the name of Danieri (Daniel). He spent the rest of his life in exile. He died in 1903, aged 35 years. In 1910 his remains were repatriated and buried at Kasubi.

1872 – On this date the Russian poet Mikhail Kuzmin was born (d.1936) was a prominent contributor to the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. Kuzmin's views on art had much in common with Sergei Diaghilev and the Mir iskusstva (World of Art). He was fascinated with Voltaire's fiction and the ancient Greek novels, imitating them and translating The Golden Ass (by Lucius Apuleius) into Russian. In 1906, he issued the first Russian novel with a homosexual theme, Kryl'ia, (Wings, 1906), which would be mocked by Vladimir Nabokov in his 1930 novella The Eye.

Kuzmin wrote the first substantial body of free verse in Russian literature. The Trout Breaks the Ice (1929) is his most significant poem sequence exploring homosexual themes. Kuzmin spent his declining years translating Shakespeare's plays.

1889 – Fannie Hurst (d.1968) was an American novelist. Although her books are not well remembered today, during her lifetime some of her more famous novels were Stardust (1919), Lummox (1923), A President is Born (1927), Back Street (1931), and Imitation of Life (1933). Hurst is now best known for the screen adaptations of her works, such as the 1934 film Imitation of Life and the 1959 remake, based on her novel, which examined race relations.

In 1921, Hurst was among the first to join the Lucy Stone League, an organization that fought for women to preserve their maiden names. She was active in the Urban League, and was appointed to the National Advisory Committee to the Works Progress Administration in 1940. She was also a delegate to the World Health Organization in 1952.

Hurst hosted a talk show out of New York called Showcase beginning in 1958. Showcase was notable for presenting several of the earliest well-rounded discussions of homosexuality and was one of the few on which homosexual men spoke for themselves rather than being debated by a panel of "experts". Hurst was praised by early homophile group the Mattachine Society which invited Hurst to deliver the keynote address at the Society's 1958 convention.

1919 – Pierre Elliott Trudeau, (d.2000) was the 15th Prime Minister of Canada from April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979, and again from March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984.

Trudeau began his political career as a lawyer, intellectual, and activist in Quebec politics. In the 1960s, he entered federal politics by joining the Liberal Party of Canada. He was appointed as Lester Pearson's Parliamentary Secretary, and later became his Minister of Justice. From his base in Montreal, Trudeau took control of the Liberal Party and became a charismatic leader, inspiring "Trudeaumania". From the late 1960s until the mid-1980s, he dominated the Canadian political scene and aroused passionate reactions. "Reason before passion" was his personal motto. He retired from politics in 1984.

Admirers praise the force of Trudeau's intellect and salute his political acumen in preserving national unity against the Quebec sovereignty movement, suppressing a violent revolt, and establishing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms within Canada's constitution. Critics accuse him of arrogance, economic mismanagement, and unduly favouring the federal government relative to the provinces.

As Minister of Justice, Pierre Trudeau was responsible for introducing the landmark Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1968-69, an omnibus bill whose provisions included, among other things, the decriminalization of homosexual acts between consenting adults, the legalization of contraception, abortion and lotteries, new gun ownership restrictions as well as the authorization of breathalyzer tests on suspected drunk drivers. Trudeau famously defended the decriminalization of homosexual acts segment of the bill by telling reporters that "there's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation", adding that "what's done in private between adults doesn't concern the Criminal Code".

1921 – Jesse (Alexander) Helms, Jr. (d.2008) was a five-term Republican United States Senator from North Carolina. On social issues, Helms was a traditionalist. He was a "master obstructionist" who relished his nickname, "Senator No." He opposed, at various times, civil rights, disability rights, feminism, gay rights, affirmative action, abortion, and government support for modern art with nudity. Helms brought an "aggressiveness" to his conservatism, as in his rhetoric against homosexuality, and employed racially charged language in his campaigns and editorials.

Helms opposed many progressive policies regarding race, such as busing, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, Helms once referred to the University of North Carolina (UNC) as the "University of Negroes and Communists." Helms called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 'the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress', and sponsored legislation to either extend it to the entire country or scrap it altogether. Helms reminded voters that he tried, with a 16-day filibuster, to stop the Senate from approving a federal holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He has been accused of being a segregationist by some political observers and scholars.

In 1996 the Department of Justice admonished Helms's 1990 campaign for mailing 125,000 postcards to households in predominantly African-American precincts warning them (incorrectly) that they could go to jail if they had not updated their addresses on the electoral register since moving. Helms opposed 'every piece of civil rights and affirmative action legislation' and blocked 'black judges from being considered for the federal bench'. In 1982, he voted against the extension of the Voting Rights Act. Helms opposed busing, supported the racist apartheid regime of South Africa, and for years blocked attempts by President Bill Clinton to appoint a Black judge on the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Only when Helms's own judicial choices were threatened with blocking did attorney Roger Gregory of Richmond, Virginia get confirmed. Helms also tried to block the nomination of Carol Moseley Braun, the first African-American female senator, as ambassador to New Zealand.

Helms had a negative view of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and LGBT rights in the United States. Helms called homosexuals 'weak, morally sick wretches' and tried to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts for supporting the 'gay-oriented artwork of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe'. In 1993, when then-president Bill Clinton wanted to appoint 'out' lesbian Roberta Achtenberg to assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms held up the confirmation 'because she's a damn lesbian', adding 'she's not your garden-variety lesbian. She's a militant-activist-mean lesbian'. Helms also stated 'I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine'. When Clinton urged that gays be allowed to serve openly in the armed forces, Helms said the president 'better have a bodyguard' if he visited North Carolina. His views on gay and lesbian citizens were depicted in the 1998 documentary film Dear Jesse.

Helms initially fought against increasing federal financing for HIV/AIDS research and treatment, saying the disease resulted from 'unnatural' and 'disgusting' homosexual behavior. "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy," he said in 1988. In his final Senate year, he strongly supported AIDS measures in Africa, where heterosexual transmission of the disease is most common, and continued to hold the belief that the 'homosexual lifestyle' is the cause of the spread of the epidemic in America.

Helms's health remained poor after he retired from the Senate in 2003. In April 2006, news reports disclosed that Helms had multi-infarct dementia, which leads to failing memory and diminished cognitive function, as well as a number of physical difficulties. He was later moved into a convalescent center near his home. Helms died of vascular dementia during the early morning hours of July 4, 2008, at the age of 86.

1940 – Professor Uzi Even is an Israeli professor of chemistry in Tel Aviv University and a former politician.

Born in Haifa to eastern European Jewish immigrants, Even studied for a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics at the Technion, and a Ph.D at Tel Aviv University. He lists his specializations as spectroscopy of super cold molecules, molecular clusters and cluster impact chemistry, and the quantum properties of helium clusters.

In 1993 he told the Knesset that the IDF, where he served as a Lieutenant Colonel, had sacked him and removed his security clearance after they discovered he was gay. His testimony led to Yitzhak Rabin's government changing the law and regulations to allow homosexuals to serve in the army in any position, including one requiring high security clearance. In 1995 he successfully challenged his employer, Tel Aviv University, for spousal rights for his partner.

A member of Meretz, he narrowly missed out on being elected to the fifteenth Knesset in 1999, but as the next placed candidate on the party's list, he became an MK when Amnon Rubinstein resigned in 2002, making him the first openly homosexual member of the Knesset.

In 2006, Even announced he was leaving Meretz and joining the Labor Party, feeling comfortable doing so after he noticed that Labor promised equality to all citizens in its election manifesto.

On March 10, 2009, the Tel Aviv family court ruled that Even and his nowadays ex-partner, Amit Kama, can legally adopt their 30-year-old foster son, Yossi Even-Kama, making them the first same-sex male couple in Israel whose right of adoption has been legally acknowledged.

 Added 2024

1947 — James Robert Baker was an American author of sharply satirical, predominantly gay-themed fiction (d.1997). A native Californian, his work is set almost entirely in Southern California. After graduating from UCLA, he began his career as a screenwriter, but became disillusioned and started writing novels instead. Though he garnered fame for his books Fuel-Injected Dreams and Boy Wonder, after the controversy surrounding publication of his novel, Tim and Pete, he faced increasing difficulty having his work published. According to his life partner, this was a contributing factor in his suicide.

Baker's lifelong ambition was to write. Upon graduating from UCLA, he spent approximately five years writing Hollywood screenplays in the early 1980s, a process he hated. While financially successful, he was frustrated that his work was not being produced.

Turning his attention to novels, his first book, Adrenaline, was published under the pseudonym James Dillinger. A story of two gay fugitive lovers on the run, it presaged the satire and drug fueled violence so prominent in his later books. Here Baker began developing the themes that dominated his following works: anarchy; angry and somewhat paranoid gay men; the dark underside of Los Angeles, juxtaposed with its sunny outward image; the hypocrisy of organized religion; anonymous sex and its implications in the age of AIDS; and homophobia and the oppression of gays in a Republican dominated America.

 Its plot device of underdog characters forced into flight due to circumstances beyond their control was one Baker explored in all of his subsequent work. The modest success of this novel encouraged him to devote himself to what have become his best known works, Fuel-Injected Dreams (a novel revolving around a character loosely based on record producer Phil Spector) and the 1986 release Boy Wonder. After the novel was published, he stopped screenwriting in order to solely concentrate on books. He spent the bulk of each day writing and researching, and acted out characters and scenes of his novels on videotape to perfect the dialogue.

Baker's work has achieved cult status in the years since his death, and two additional novels have been posthumously published. First-edition copies of his earlier works have become collector's items. His novel Testosterone was adapted to a film of the same name, though it was not a financial success. Two other books have been optioned for films, but they have not been produced.

After the reception of Tim and Pete, with several critics calling him "The Last Angry Gay Man", Baker faced increasing difficulty finding a publisher for his work and his financial position became precarious. He was only able to publish one novella, Right Wing, and that was self-published on the Internet.

Baker's life partner, Ron Robertson, believes that this difficulty led Baker on a quick, downwards emotional spiral. Baker killed himself at his home in November 1997, by asphyxiation in his garage. His death was noted in literary circles and mainstream press; the Gay Times in the United Kingdom wrote, "Baker's suicide is particularly tragic because it robs American gay writing of a refreshingly distinctive voice quite unlike the po-faced prose of so many of his contemporaries."

By 2006, first editions of Adrenaline, Boy Wonder, Fuel-Injected Dreams and Tim and Pete had become collector's items and commanded high prices at rare book stores.

Nyro was briefly married to carpenter David Bianchini in 1971. Previously she had a relationship with singer/songwriter Jackson Browne in late 1970 to early 1971.

In the early 1980s, Laura began living with painter Maria Desiderio (1954-1999), a relationship which lasted 17 years, the rest of Laura's life.

In 1996 she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. After the diagnosis, Columbia Records prepared a double-disc CD retrospective of material from her years at the label. The company involved Nyro herself, who selected the tracks and approved the final project. She lived to see the release of Stoned Soul Picnic: The Best of Laura Nyro (1997), and was reportedly pleased with the outcome.

Nyro died of ovarian cancer in Danbury, Connecticut, on April 8, 1997, at the age of 49; the same disease had claimed the life of her mother at the same age.

1948 – Laurent Gagliardi, born in Montreal, Quebec, is a Canadian screenwriter and film director.

He is most noted as cowriter with Léa Pool and Michel Langlois of the screenplay for The Savage Woman (La Demoiselle sauvage), for which the trio received a Genie Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 12th Genie Awards in 1991, and as the director of the films The Night of the Visitor (La Nuit du visiteur), which was a Genie nominee for Best Theatrical Short Film in the same year, and When Love Is Gay (Quand l'amour est gai).

When Love Is Gay was the first documentary film on homosexuality ever released by the French division of the National Film Board of Canada.

Nancy Diuguid (second from left)

1948 – Nancy Diuguid was an American theater director, who lived and worked in England and South Africa.

Nancy Elizabeth Diuguid was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her father was a tobacco farmer. She attended schools in Kentucky, and Indiana University Bloomington, before moving to London, England, to study at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in 1972

After leaving the Central School, Diuguid did street theatre and worked with the fringe group A Plum Line which rehearsed in the ballroom of an Eaton Square squat (next door to Lord Boothby's home). From there, it was a short step to the recently formed Gay Sweatshop and, in 1976, a three-month tour of Jill Posner's coming-out play Any Woman Can, which provoked bomb threats. In 1979, she directed her last production with this company, The Dear Love of Comrades by Noël Greig, about the 19th-century socialist utopian, and early LGBT activist, Edward Carpenter. The following year, at her instigation, the first women's festival was held at the Action Space (now the Drill Hall) which trailblazed the future of lesbian theatre, such as Susan Griffin's Voices staged by Diuguid.[5] She also formed the Women's Project Company (with Kate Crutchley, 1979) and directed several other plays: Louise Page's Tissue (1978), the first play about breast cancer; Noël Greig's Angels Descend On Paris (1980), concerning the Nazi persecution of gays and Jews; Timberlake Wertenbaker's New Anatomies (1981); and Patterns (1984), by her own company, Changing Women.

Diuguid had a strong alliance with Clean Break, a women's theatre company formed by ex-prisoners, directing the plays The Easter Egg (1983) by Chris Tchaikovsky, a prison reformer, and Lin Coghlan's Apache Tears (2000). Other major productions included Sore Throats (1979); The Stick Wife (1991), about the wives of three Ku Klux Klan members; and Request Programme, by Franz Xaver Kroetz (1986) with actress Eileen Nicholas, for which Diuguid won a best director award. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, she travelled extensively in Australia, Brazil (as a guest director, at the British Council Theatre Group, with Luiz Päetow), Japan and Israel (where a traumatic personal experience led, 10 years later, to her shortfilm Aftermath). Furthermore, she became a staff director to the English National Opera and also worked as an Associate Director at the Hampstead Theatre.

In 1999, Diuguid settled in South Africa and started an arts and drama group with male prisoners at the Leeuwkop Maximum Security Prison. "Doing work about people who are at the edge, is for me second nature," she said. The next year, having been diagnosed with breast cancer, she started a project in Alexandra township using dance, drama, art and movement to help empower and heal traumatised children. The name of the project was Voices, and the name of her company, "Dedel'ingoma" (which means Release your song). In 2002, she directed the techno-opera Earthdiving in Cape Town.

Diuguid continued working until shortly before her death in 2003. Her companion of 17 years, South African filmmaker Melanie Chait, and their foster son Desmond, survived her. She left instructions to spread her cremated remains in England, South Africa and Kentucky. Diuguid was memorialized by a plaque in St Michael's and All Angels Church, Guiting Power, Gloucestershire, England, and with a cenotaph at the Ghent Cemetery in Carroll County, Kentucky.

1953 – Tim Gill is an American computer software entrepreneur and LGBT rights activist. He created the Gill Foundation, one of the first major foundations to benefit the GLBT community.

Tim Gill got hooked on computers when his high school acquired its first computer. It wasn't long until he taught himself to create complex programs. Instead of following in his father's footsteps as a physician as he had originally planned, he majored in applied mathematics and computer science at the University of Colorado.

After jobs at Hewlett-Packard and a consulting services firm, Gill started the company Quark, Inc. in 1981 with a $2,000 loan from his parents. Quark produced successful page layout software for the graphics market. With the introduction of Farhad (Fred) Ebrahimi as CEO in 1986 and the monumental success of QuarkXPress "first introduced in 1987," Gill became a multi-millionaire. Gill announced in 2000 that he had sold his 50% interest in Quark, Inc., citing his growing involvement in philanthropic and activist endeavors.[

Gill began to speak out publicly as a gay man in 1992 when Colorado voters passed Amendment 2, which banned laws designed to protect GLBT people from discrimination. In 1994 he established the Gill Foundation with the mission of securing equal opportunity for all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender expression.

One of its projects is the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado. His political endeavors, which are separate from his charitable foundation, are directed through the Gill Action Fund.

Gill married his husband Scott Miller in Massachusetts in 2009. They live in Denver, Colorado.

1954 – David Trago, the elected sheriff of Jackson County, Ohio, is arrested on sodomy charges. He is a religious fundamentalist and the father of 13 children. The first trial ends in his acquittal, but later he is arrested again for attempting to have sex with a teenage male and is convicted and removed from office.

1956 – Martina Navratilova, born in Prague, is a Czech American tennis player and a former World No. 1. Billie Jean King said about Navratilova in 2006, "She's the greatest singles, doubles and mixed doubles player who's ever lived."

Navratilova won 18 Grand Slam singles titles, 31 Grand Slam women's doubles titles (an all-time record), and 10 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. She reached the Wimbledon singles final 12 times, including 9 consecutive years from 1982 through 1990, and won the women's singles title at Wimbledon a record 9 times. She and King each won 20 Wimbledon titles, an all-time record. Navratilova is one of just three women to have accomplished a career Grand Slam in singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles (called the Grand Slam "boxed set") a record she shares with Margaret Court and Doris Hart. She holds the open era record for most singles titles (167) and doubles titles (177). She recorded the longest winning streak in the open era (74 consecutive matches) and three of the six longest winning streaks in the women's open era. Navratilova, Margaret Court, and Maureen Connolly share the record for the most consecutive Grand Slam singles titles (six). Navratilova reached 11 consecutive Grand Slam singles finals, second all-time to Steffi Graf's 13. In women's doubles, Navratilova and Pam Shriver won 109 consecutive matches and won all four Grand Slam titles in 1984. Also the pair set an all time record of 79 titles together and tied Louise Brough Clapp's and Margaret Osborne duPont's record of 20 Grand Slam women's doubles titles as a team. In addition she won the season ending WTA Tour Championships a record 8 times and made the finals a record 14 times and won the doubles title a record 11 times. Navratilova is the only man or woman to have won 8 different tournaments at least 7 times.

Originally from Czechoslovakia, she was stripped of her citizenship when, in 1975 at the age of 18, she asked the United States for political asylum and was granted temporary residency. At the time, Navratilova was told by the Czechoslovakian Sports Federation that she was becoming too Americanized and that she should go back to school and make tennis secondary. Navratilova became a US citizen in 1981, but on January 9, 2008, she had her Czech citizenship restored. She stated she has not renounced her American citizenship nor does she plan to do so and that the restoration of her Czech citizenship was not politically motivated.

In 1981, shortly after becoming a United States citizen, Navratilova came out publicly about her sexual orientation. During the early 1980s, she was involved with author Rita Mae Brown. From 1984 to 1991, Navratilova had a long-term relationship with partner Judy Nelson. Their split in 1991 included a much-publicized legal wrangle. Navratilova was featured in a WITA (Women's International Tennis Association) calendar, shot by Jean Renard with her Wimbledon trophies and Nelson's children in the background.

In 1985, Navratilova released an autobiography, co-written with New York Times sports columnist George Vecsey, entitled Martina in the U.S. and Being Myself in the rest of the world. She had earlier co-written a tennis instruction book with Mary Carillo in 1982 entitled Tennis My Way. She later wrote three mystery novels with Liz Nickles: The Total Zone (1994), Breaking Point (1996), and Killer Instinct (1997).

Navratilova also made a humorous guest appearance on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace in a 2000 episode in which a flashback revealed that she had been a heterosexual until a 1985 relationship with character Karen Walker "turned her Lesbian." Navratilova's most recent literary effort was a health and fitness book entitled Shape Your Self (2006).

On April 7, 2010, Navratilova announced that she was being treated for breast cancer. A routine mammography in January 2010 had revealed that she had a ductal carcinoma in situ in her left breast, which she was informed of in February, and in March she had the tumour surgically removed.

1977 – Citizens United to Protect Our Children, an organization in Portland OR, announced they had failed to get enough signatures to get a recall election of Mayor Neil Goldschmidt after he declared Portland Gay Pride Day.

1980 – Richard John Sawka II, better known as Colby Keller, is an American visual artist and former pornographic film actor. His career in porn film started in 2004 at Sean Cody and subsequently expanded to include such studios as Cocksure Men, Randy Blue, Titan Men, Falcon, CockyBoys and Men.com. Keller has also appeared in the short, Zolushka, a queer retelling of Cinderella, and in the popular series Capitol Hill, both by the cult filmmaker Wes Hurley.

(Click for full Monty)

Born in Michigan, Colby Keller was raised in Texas where he graduated from the University of Houston with a bachelor's degree in anthropology. In addition, he is a graduate of The Maryland Institute College of Art, with a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in visual and performing arts.

During his time performing in gay porn, Keller continued to work as an artist. His two most notable art projects are Pieces of Eight and Everything But Lenin, both collaborative performance pieces. Pieces of Eight involved multiple projects and multiple collaborations while Everything But Lenin involved giving away all of his earthly possessions with the exception a large metal plaque of Lenin and was precipitated by an eviction notice presented to residents of his Baltimore apartment complex in March 2014. Those who took part received a signed certificate as project participants.

In addition to his porn performances and art projects, Keller appeared in a series of sex advice videos (titled In Bed With Colby Keller) for Manhunt. The series ran from 2012 until 2014 and resulted in 62 videos.

In 2012, Keller appeared in a masquerade-themed music video for the song "After Dark", by dance artists Undercover. And, in his 2013 music video for "Cannibal", Natti Vogel enlisted Keller to play a hooded witch to his tempted Hansel in a recreation of Hansel and Gretel.

In 2013, Keller collaborated with artist Cameron Stalheim on a project called Myth as Object, which resulted in a 2014 exhibit as Stalheim's MFA graduating thesis at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Keller's body was cast in silicone to create a thirty-foot long merman sculpture in his likeness.

In 2014, Keller sold his belongings and began a project Colby Does America, composed of porn scenes filmed across every state in the United States.

In 2017, he appeared in two episodes of the third season of EastSiders.

1981 – An Ohio appellate court sustains the libel verdict against Larry Flint's Hustler magazine for a satirical cartoon showing his rival, Penthouse publisher Robert Guccione, engaged in a "homosexual act."

1990 – Former Supreme Court justice Lewis Powell declared that he believed he made a mistake by voting to uphold Georgia's sodomy laws in the 1986 Bowers v Hardwick case.

1990 – Three white supremacists were convicted of conspiring to to bomb Neighbours Disco in Seattle, on Capitol Hill, a popular, gay-oriented restaurant and nightspot. A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted three Idaho men linked to a white supremacist group, alleging they conspired to blow up the gay nightclub. All were associated with the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, better known as the Aryan Nations. The church has preached a religion of white supremacy and vowed to establish a whites-only enclave in the Pacific Northwest. The men were held on two counts of conspiring to destroy Neighbours Disco, and one count of possessing a destructive device. A test bomb was detonated on April 14 in Idaho, with plans to blow up Neighbours and later other bars in Seattle.

1991 – Tyler Posey is an American actor and musician who is known for his role as Scott McCall on the MTV series Teen Wolf (2011–2017).

Posey was born in Santa Monica, California, to actor and writer John Posey and Cyndi Terese Posey (née Garcia). He grew up in Santa Clarita, California. Posey has two brothers.

His mother, who was of Mexican descent, died of breast cancer in December 2014. Season 5 of Teen Wolf was dedicated to her memory.

Posey has worked steadily in film and television. In February 2002, he appeared in the film Collateral Damage; in December of that year, he played the main character's son in the romantic comedy Maid in Manhattan. He auditioned for the role of Jacob Black in the Twilight film series in 2007 but lost the role to his friend Taylor Lautner. The two regularly auditioned for the same roles as child actors.

In 2011, Posey was cast in his breakout role as the lead in the MTV television series Teen Wolf, which is based on the 1985 film. Posey plays high school student Scott McCall, who is bitten by a werewolf and must keep this fact secret while protecting his loved ones from a host of supernatural threats and beings. In 2015, he also became a co-producer for the fifth season of Teen Wolf.

As a musician, Posey played guitar and contributed vocals in the pop punk band PVMNTS along with guitarist/bassist/vocalist Freddy Ramirez and drummer Nick Guzman. The trio released the song "Standing (On My Own Two Feet)" on June 14, 2018, on which Posey wrote about the passing of his mother in 2014. The band self-released their six-track EP Better Days on August 17, 2018. In April 2019, it was announced that Posey had left the band and was pursuing another music venture, which became the band Five North.

Five North is a pop-punk rock band formed by childhood best friends Posey and Kyle Murphy. Posey and Murphy originate from just off "The 5" (Interstate 5 in California) in Santa Clarita, California, hence the origin of the band's name Five North. The two recruited Makeout drummer Scott Eckel after being introduced by music producer and close friend John Feldmann. Five North's debut single "This Mess" was released on October 4, 2019, and their debut eight-track EP Scumbag was released on March 6, 2020, via Big Noise Music Group.

Posey became engaged to his childhood sweetheart, Seana Gorlick, in 2013. The couple broke off the engagement that same year, after a ten-year relationship.

"I'm confident in my sexuality," Posey said in an Instagram Story. An OnlyFans fan asked to see his bulge and he happily obliged with the shot below:

1991 – Admiral Frank B Kelso, chief of naval operations, announced that the explosion of the USS Iowa which killed forty-seven men had been proven not to have been caused by a wrongful intentional act and apologized to the family of Clayton Hartwig. Hartwig had been accused of intentionally causing the blast as an act of suicide following the break up of a homosexual affair.

2010 – The home of a gay couple in Little Pond, Prince Edward Island is firebombed. Both men escaped the fire unharmed, but their home was destroyed. In late October and November, a series of rallies and fundraising concerts is held in both Little Pond and Charlottetown to support the couple and to oppose homophobic violence.