July 15

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circa 1792 – James (Miranda) Barry, British surgeon, was a woman. What's more, she was a woman who spent her entire life disguised as a man (d.1865). For over 40 years, she was an officer and a surgeon in the British Army and enjoyed a highly distinguished career without arousing the suspicion of either her superiors or her patients. Much of her medical career was spent in South Africa, Jamaica, Canada and other outposts of the British Empire.

If anything appeared odd about her to her many army colleagues it was her slight stature (she was five feet tall), but she eventually compensated for this with her own invention of telescoping false heels, antedating Adler elevator shoes by more than a century. Only the South African natives were sufficiently observant to notice another device she adopted to pass herself off as a man. Because of the elaborately padded shoulders that she affected the natives called her "the Kapok Doktor."

Dr. Barry, over the years, developed a reputation as quite a rake and was known to "flirt openly" at balls with "the best-looking women in the room." She apparently did more than flirt, as well. She carried on an affair with a Mrs. Fenton, although it is not known at what point, if ever, Mrs. Fenton learned that her lover was a woman.

Still, Dr. Barry's reputation as an army officer was never sullied since she was known as "a perfect gentleman who did not swear in the presence of women." When she died at 70, she would have gone to her grave with her secret unknown had it not been for a charwoman who was preparing the body of the female Major General for burial. It must have been quite the surprise.

Dutch filmmaker Marleen Gorris began work on a film based on Barry's life, entitled Heaven and Earth, which began shooting in the UK on December 10 2008 before moving to Cape Town in January 2009. Set in 1825 in the Cape, the film tells of a secret love affair between Barry and Lord Charles Somerset. As of March 2016, it had still not been released. Barry has previously been played by Anna Massey in an episode of the BBC drama-documentary A Skirt Through History.

1834 – Spain: End of the Spanish Inquisition, abolished by Ferdinand VII’s widow Maria Christina. Between 1000 and 1600 people had been convicted of sodomy during that time and 170 were executed.

1858 – Georg von Hülsen-Haeseler, born in Berlin , (d.1922 there) was a Prussian court official and theater director.

Count Hülsen was the son of the royal Prussian court theater manager Botho von Hülsen (1815–1886) and his wife, the writer Helene von Hülsen (1829–1892).

In 1893 he took his leave as Rittmeister and was appointed artistic director of the Royal State Theater in Wiesbaden, where he was under the protectorate of Kaiser Wilhelm II. In 1896 he organized the first International May Festival.

From 1903 he was the successor of the dismissed Bolko von Hochberg, general manager of all royal theaters in Prussia, and from 1908 for the province of Hanover also. He stayed in this position, which his father had already held before him, until the Prussian court was dissolved when it collapsed in 1918.

Hülsen-Haeseler was a loyal servant and close confidante of the emperor, but did not follow him in all aesthetic questions. Richard Strauss, for example, little appreciated by the monarch because he was too modern, was able to work almost unhindered under Hülsen's direction at the Berlin State Opera.

In the course of the Harden-Eulenburg affair in 1907, he too was accused of homosexuality.

1893 - German-born actor and film director William Dieterle, was born (d.1972). Dieterle began his career as a director and actor in Germany but worked in Hollywood for much of his career.

He was born Wilhelm Dieterle, the youngest child of nine, to Jewish parents Jacob and Berthe Dieterle. As a child, he lived in considerable poverty and earned money by various means including carpentry and as a scrap dealer. He became interested in theater early and by the age of sixteen, he had joined a travelling theater company. His striking good looks and ambition soon paved the way as a leading romantic actor in theater productions. In 1919, he attracted the attention of Max Reinhardt in Berlin who hired him as an actor for his productions. He started acting in German films in 1921 to make more money and quickly became a popular character actor. He tired of acting quickly and wanted to direct.

He directed his first film in 1923, Der Mensch am Wege, which co-starred a young Marlene Dietrich, but he returned to acting for several years and appeared in such notable German films as Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (Waxworks) (1924) and F.W. Murnau's Faust (1926). In 1927, Dieterle and his wife (well, you know...these things happen), Charlotte Hagenbruch, formed their own production company and returned to directing films, such as Sex in Chains (1928) which was one of the first films to deal with homosexuality. It portrayed a homosexual relationship between two prisoners (Dieterle played one of the men).

In 1930, Dieterle emigrated to the United States when he was offered a job in Hollywood making German versions of American films; he became a citizen of the United States in 1937.

He adapted quickly to Hollywood filmmaking and was soon directing original films. His first, The Last Flight (1931), was a success and has been hailed as a forgotten masterpiece. Other films made during the 1930s include Jewel Robbery (1932), Adorable (1933), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935 film) with Reinhardt, The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Juarez (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, and Kismet (1944) with Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich.

During the 1940s, Dieterle works were infused with more lush, romantic expression and many critics see the films of this period as some of his best works. They include The Devil and Daniel Webster (also known as All That Money Can Buy, 1941), Love Letters (1945) and Portrait of Jennie (1948).

Dieterle's career declined in the 1950s during the McCarthyism period. Although he was never directly blacklisted, his libertarian film Blockade (1938) as well as some of the people he worked with were considered suspect. He continued to make American films in the 1950s, including the film noir The Turning Point (1952), Salome (1953) with Rita Hayworth, Elephant Walk (1954) with Elizabeth Taylor, and a biopic of Richard Wagner, Magic Fire (1955) for Republic Pictures. He made some films in Germany and Italy, and a notorious U.S. flop, Quick, Let's Get Married (1964) - also known as The Confession or Seven Different Ways - with Ginger Rogers before retiring in 1965.

Dieterle is remembered for always wearing a large hat and white gloves on set.

1914 - Gavin Maxwell (d.1969) was a Scottish naturalist and author, best known for his work with otters. He wrote the book Ring of Bright Water (1960) about how he brought an otter back from Iraq and raised it in Scotland. Ring of Bright Water sold more than a million copies and was made into a movie starring Bill Travers and Virginia McKenna in 1969. The title Ring of Bright Water was taken from a poem by Kathleen Raine, who said in her autobiography that Maxwell had been the love of her life.

Maxwell was the youngest son of Lieutenant-Colonel Aymer Maxwell and Lady Mary Percy, fifth daughter of the seventh Duke of Northumberland. His paternal grandfather, Sir Herbert Maxwell, was an archaeologist, politician and natural historian.

During World War II, Maxwell served as an instructor with the Special Operations Executive. After the war, he purchased the Isle of Soay off Skye in the Inner Hebrides, Scotland. According to his book Harpoon at a Venture (1952, bad planning and a lack of finance meant his attempt to establish a basking shark fishery there between 1945-48 proved unsuccessful.

In 1956, Maxwell toured the reed marshes of Southern Iraq with explorer Wilfred Thesiger. Maxwell's account of their trip appears in A Reed Shaken By The Wind, later published under the title People of the Reeds.

Maxwell's book Ring of Bright Water describes how, in 1956, he brought a Smooth-coated Otter back from Iraq and raised it in "Camusfearna" (Sandaig) on the west coast of Scotland. He took the otter, called Mijbil, to the London Zoological Society, where it was decided that this was a previously unknown sub-species of Smooth-coated Otter. It was therefore named Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli (or, colloquially, "Maxwell's Otter") after him. It is thought to have become extinct in the alluvial salt marshes of Iraq as a result of the large-scale drainage of the area that started in the 1960s.

In his book The Marsh Arabs, Wilfred Thesiger wrote:

The otter became woven into the fabric of Maxwell's life. Kathleen Raine's relationship with Maxwell ended in 1956 when she indirectly caused the death of Mijbil. Raine held herself responsible not only for losing Mijbil but for a curse she had uttered shortly beforehand, frustrated by Maxwell's homosexuality: "Let Gavin suffer in this place as I am suffering now." Raine blamed herself thereafter for all Maxwell's misfortunes, beginning with Mijbil's death and ending with the cancer that took his life in 1969.

1947 – Michael Lassell, born in New York City, is a professional writer and editor.

Lassell has written extensively in the fields of design, travel, the arts (especially theater), and GLBT studies. His poetry, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in newspapers, magazines, books, journals and anthologies in the U.S. and abroad, as well as numerous college and university textbooks.

He has been most often anthologized for his poem, written at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, "How to Watch Your Brother Die." His work has been translated into numerous languages, including French, Dutch, Spanish, German, Catalan, and Braille. His work behind the scenes on Broadway with Disney have been described as some of the most honest accounts of production life.

He served as features director of "Metropolitan Home" from 1992 until 2009. Prior to that, he served as managing editor of Interview and L.A. Style magazines, also as a theater critic for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and L.A. Weekly.

Lassell currently resides in Greenwich Village, New York City, with his rescued dachshund mix, Schuyler.

1954 – Allison Brewer is a Canadian social activist and politician, and the former leader of the New Brunswick New Democratic Party. She has been particularly active in areas of lesbian and gay rights and access to abortion. She is openly lesbian.

Brewer was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She was the founder and longtime director of Dr. Henry Morgentaler's abortion clinic in Fredericton, New Brunswick, before moving to Nunavut in 2000. In Nunavut, she continued her activism organizing gay pride events and lobbying for the passage of the Nunavut Human Rights Act.

A prominent member of Egale Canada, she was one of its two representatives to the United Nations Conference on Women in 1995. At the event, which was held in Beijing, she was briefly detained by Chinese officials for displaying a banner which read Lesbian rights are human rights.

Brewer returned to her native New Brunswick in late 2004 and on May 14 of the following year announced her candidacy for the leadership of the New Brunswick New Democratic Party. On June 23, 2005, the final day for candidates to register, she briefly became the leader-presumptive as the only candidate, however the party extended the deadline to July 12 with her consent and two other candidates entered the race. Brewer went on to win the leadership on September 25, 2005, at a convention in Fredericton, becoming the first openly gay leader of a provincial party.

He married Victoria Jenkins in September 1990 in Kensington and they have a daughter and son. His niece is Golden Globe-award winning actress Emily Blunt. In August 2010, he announced that he was leaving his wife, in order "to come to terms with his homosexuality". Blunt's voting record in Parliament had previously been broadly unsympathetic towards gay rights, though slightly more favourable when compared to most other Conservative, and several Labour, MPs.

On 20 January 2016, he admitted to having used poppers, during a parliamentary debate that discussed banning them along with other legal highs. He stated "I out myself as a user of poppers. I am astonished to find [the government] is proposing it to be banned and frankly so would many other gay men."

1961- David Cicilline is the U.S. Representative for Rhode Island's 1st congressional district. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He is formerly the Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, and was the first openly gay mayor of a U.S. state capital.

Below he discusses being publicly gay and the nuances of homophobia:

1971 – Sandon Berg, raised in Huntsville, Alabama, is an American film producer and screenwriter as well as an actor with past roles in both film and television. He co-founded United Gay Network, a film production company, with his longtime partner, Michael Akers.

He moved to Los Angeles to work in the entertainment industry. Over the years, he worked in various film production jobs and even starred in several leading brand commercials. He had met Michael Akers in 1998 and the two began writing and producing films together, with Akers also directing and editing. United Gay Network was fully established in 2002 and its first long feature film was Gone, But Not Forgotten, a groundbreaking gay film that explores the question of sexuality as a choice.

In forming United Gay Network, the longtime partners aspired not only to promote the genre of "gay films" but also tried to bring gay cinema closer to mainstream cinema. As Berg stated in a radio interview, he and Akers were striving to create stories that would crossover to a broader audience.

This is apparent in their latest production Morgan. Berg said: "I think Morgan is a very universal story. I don’t think it is gay-specific at all.” Morgan is the story of a gay and paralyzed young athlete that defies stereotypes and pushes through boundaries. The lead character, a young athlete, named Morgan Oliver, is first seen wallowing in a state of depression, drowning his sorrows in beer as he watches bicycle racing (the sport that at once defined his sense of purpose and drove him to his catalytic accident) on television.

With each film, Akers and Berg shook things up. Matrimonium was a unique foray into comedy that played to reality show hype, while addressing homosexual stereotypes, and Phoenix was yet another step, into the suspenseful and mysterious journey of two jilted lovers following the trail of their mutual betrayer.

Today Berg and his partner, Akers, who met for the first time on a blind date in the late 1990s, live in New York City.

1971 – Jim Rash is an American actor, comedian, producer, screenwriter, and director. He is known for playing Dean Craig Pelton on the NBC/Yahoo! sitcom Community for which he nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 2012. In 2012, he received a Golden Globe nomination and won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film The Descendants.

Rash was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he attended Charlotte Latin School. Both he and his sister were adopted. After graduating, he spent a post-graduate year at the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

Rash played "Mr. Grayson/Stitches", sidekick to supervillain Royal Pain, in the 2005 film Sky High. He played Fenton on That '70s Show and Andrew (the "whore house guy") on Reno 911!. He guest starred in the final episode of Friends, and played Head T.A. Philip in Slackers.

Rash and comedy partner Nat Faxon moved into screenwriting, writing a pilot in 2005 for a series entitled Adopted, about an adult who finds out his parents are not his birth parents. The show did not take off. From 2009 until the show's finale in 2015, Rash starred on Community as Craig Pelton, the dean of the community college in which the show takes place.

Rash and Faxon wrote the screenplay for The Descendants, based on the novel of the same name by Kaui Hart Hemmings. The script appeared on the 2008 edition of the Black List, which lists the most popular unproduced scripts in Hollywood at that time. The film was produced in Hawaii and starred George Clooney; it was released on November 18, 2011 to critical acclaim. The film received a Golden Globe nomination and won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Rash and Faxon co-wrote and directed the film The Way Way Back, which received a standing ovation at its premiere at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. Parts of the film are based on Rash's teenage life. Rash is also a member of the Los Angeles-based improvisational and sketch comedy troupe The Groundlings. Since 2017, he has been the official voice actor for Donald Duck universe character Gyro Gearloose in the reboot of Ducktales, taking over the role from Hal Smith who died in 1994.

Rash is openly gay, having come out during filming of The Way Way Back, retelling the story on Instagram for National Coming Out Day in 2018.

1991 - Zach Wahls is the son of two lesbians and an activist on behalf of LGBT equality.

Zach Wahls was born via in vitro fertilisation on July 15, 1991, to a lesbian couple, his biological mother Terry Wahls, an internal medicine physician, and Jackie Reger, a nurse. He has a younger sister who shares the same biological parents. The family lived in Marshfield, Wisconsin, and moved when he was nine years old to Iowa City, Iowa.

He has said that having lesbian parents caused occasional problems during his school years when he found it difficult to explain to his peers or found that some of them were forbidden to socialize with him. He was sometimes teased and sometimes bullied because of his parents' relationship.

In 2004, as an eighth grader, he first realized that there was political opposition to the sort of family in which he was raised while watching the Republication National Convention on television. In high school he wrote a series of columns for his high school newspaper about being raised by a lesbian couple. He played quarterback on the football team and participated in speech and debate. He graduated from Iowa City West High School in 2009. He entered the University of Iowa that fall, majoring in civil and environmental engineering.

His mothers, who were together since 1994 and had a commitment ceremony in 1996, married in 2009 following the legalization of same-sex marriage in Iowa.

On January 31, 2011, Wahls addressed the Iowa House Judiciary Committee in a public hearing on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Iowa. A video of his testimony posted on YouTube went viral. It had more than 1.5 million views within two weeks and exceeded 15 million views by April 2012.

In the fall of 2011 Wahls withdrew from college to focus on activism, writing a book, and promotional activities. His book, My Two Moms, describes the mundane impact of growing up in a household headed by two lesbians, like learning to tie a necktie from Playboy.

An Eagle Scout, Wahls has targeted the Boy Scouts of America's (BSA) ban on gays and lesbians as scout leaders. On May 30, 2012, at the Boy Scout's National Annual Meeting in Orlando, Florida, wearing his Boy Scout uniform, he delivered petitions with 275,000 signatures in support of Jennifer Carol from Bridgeport, Ohio, who was forced to resign as a den mother because she is a lesbian.

1997 - Gianni Versace, Italian fashion designer died (b.1946); Italian fashion designer and founder of Gianni Versace S.p.A., and international fashion house, which produces accessories, fragrances, makeup and home furnishings as well as clothes. He also designed costumes for the theatre and films. Out gay, Versace and his companion Antonio D'Amico were regulars on the international party scene. Versace was murdered outside his Miami home at the age of 50 by deranged spree killer Andrew Cunanan.

2003 – Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, a reality show of gay men who conduct makeovers for straight men, premieres on Bravo. The show features the “Fab Five,” a quintet of gay men – Ted Allen, Kyan Douglas, Thom Filicia, Carson Kressley, and Jai Rodriguez – who conduct makeovers for straight men. It plays on stereotypes that gay men know more about fashion, food, personal grooming, interior design and culture. The show becomes immensely popular and is praised by much of the mainstream gay press, but receives some criticism for its generalizations and stereotyping.

2005 – Robert Traynham, the chief of staff and communications director for homophobe Sen. Rick Santorum , confirms rumors circulating in Washington for several months that he is gay. He continued to defend Santorum even into the 2016 election cycle.

2010 – Argentina: The Senate approves same-sex marriage by a vote of 33-27.