1985: At an AIDS candlelight vigil in San Francisco, Activist Cleve Jones conceives The Names Project.

1985: In New York City, more than 700 people concerned about negative publicity surrounding AIDS, bathhouses, and gay promiscuity attend a town meeting that leads to the founding of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

1950: In Los Angeles, Harry Hay, Rudi Gernreich, Dale Jennings, Bob Hull and Chuck Rowland, hold the first meeting of the Mattachine Society, under the name Society of Fools.

1783: In West Point, New York, Deborah Sampson is honorably discharged from the Massachusetts Regiment. Wounded in one of several battles in which she fought, Sampson had escaped discovery for almost a year and a half until falling sick with a fever. One of the earliest American examples of a passing woman, Sampson formed several attachments with women while dressed as a man. She later marries and receives a military pension.

1971: W.W. Norton publishes E.M. Forster’s Maurice, written in 1913, but dedicated by Forster “to a happier year.”

1965: In San Francisco, thirty people picketed Grace Cathedral to protest punitive actions taken against Rev. Canon Robert Cromey for his involvement in the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, an alliance between LGBT people and religious leaders. 1970: In Los Angeles, Gay Liberation Front demonstrators persuade bar owners to allow gay patrons to hold hands. … Read More