Ritch's Dating Ad to the World

Danieri Basammula-Ekkere Mwanga II Mukasa Born October 18th

Danieri Basammula-Ekkere Mwanga II Mukasa was born on October 18th, 1868 in Nakawa, an area that is now part of Kampala, Uganda. He was Kabaka or king from 1884 until 1888 and from 1889 until 1897 of Bugunda, which is modern day Uganda. Mwanga had sixteen wives and he also expected his male pages to submit to his sexual desires. In the period between 1885 and 1887 forty five of his pages refused to submit and were put to death.

Read more here and here.

Bruno, Rai & Carla - Heaven

From The San Francisco 49ers: It Gets Better

Bisexual v. Pansexual

Alexander The Great

Alexander of Macedon was born on either July 20 or 21st in Pella. Alexander succeeded his father as King of Macedon in 336 BCE after Philip was assassinated. By his untimely death at age thirty, he had created one of the largest empires in the ancient world, ranging from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River in India. Hephaestion is believed by many to have been Alexander's beloved.

Modern day labels of sexual orientation do not correspond to the types of sexual and personal relationships of ancient Greece, and their complexity is beyond my ability to describe in short.

Learn more at Wikipedia, Gay Art History and Gay Heroes.

Dorothy Thompson Born July 8th

Journalist and radio commentator Dorothy Thompson was born July 8th, 1894 in Lancaster, NY. Thompson's became an overnight sensation when Hitler expelled her from Germany for her critical views. As her marriage to Sinclair Lewis was falling apart in 1931, Thompson met and began to fall in love with Baroness Hatvany, who, using the pseudonym Christa Winsloe, wrote Madchen In Uniform about schoolgirls in love.

"A little more matriarchy is what the world needs, and I know it. Period. Paragraph."

Judy Holliday Born June 21st

Judith Tuvim was born June 21st, 1922 in New York City.

John Bouvier III Born May 19th

John Bouvier was born May 19th, 1891 in East Hampton, NY and was the oldest of five children. He served in World War I and became a stock broker after graduating Yale in 1914. Bouvier was given to drinking, gambling, and philandering, all of which contributed to his divorce in 1940 from Janet Norton Lee whom he married in 1928. The Bouviers had two daughters, Caroline Lee, who was younger, and Jacquline Lee, who would marry John F. Kennedy and charm Americans as First Lady. Despite his womanizing, Bouvier is alleged to have been one of Cole Porter's lovers.

Patrick Dennis Born May 18th

Edward Everett Tanner III was born May 18th, 1921 in Evanston, IL. Dennis is best known for his 1955 novel Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade and the 1958 sequel Around the World with Auntie Mame. Dennis has three novels on the New York Times best seller list during an eight week period in 1956. Dennis led a double life with a conventional family while secretly being bisexual.

Read the Lyric Opera of San Diego's biography and 1,000 Words: Patrick Dennis.

Tyrone Power Born May 5th

Tyrone Power Jr was born May 5th, 1913 in Cincinnati, OH. Power Sr had been a big theater star and was transitioning to movies when Tyrone visited him on the set. A divorce and an over protective mother kept Tyrone away from his father most of the time. Shortly after their reunion, Power Sr died of a heart attack while on set, and Tyrone decided he had to carry on the family legacy. On the advice of his wife Virginia, Darryl Zanuck hired Power and the young actor was soon working on the first of the fifty movies he made during his career. Tyrone wed a French actress named Annabella, had a relationship with Lana Turner, and had a second marriage with Linda Christian though he had a number of affairs with women and men during his adult life, including an on again off again relationship with Cesar Romero. Sadly, Power died of a heart attack just as his father did while working on a movie.




Read more at Gay Influence.

Romaine Brooks Born May 1st

Beatrice Romaine Goddard was born May 1st, 1874 in Rome, Italy. Beatrice had an unhappy childhood. Her parents divorced and the family was abandoned by her father Henry. The family moved to New York City though Beatrice was no better off. Her mother was unstable and gave her affections to Beatrice's mentally ill brother while Beatrice was in charge of watching him as he would attack anyone who approached him. Despite the wealth of her maternal grandfather, Isaac S. Waterman, Jr that could have served as a safety net, Beatrice's mother turned her over to a poor family and disappeared. Beatrice never revealed where her grandfather lived for fear she'd be returned to her mother.

Beatrice entered into a marriage of convenience with John Ellingham Brooks, a failed pianist, translator, in debt, and gay. The marriage lasted less than two years; she moved to London and then to Paris, he to the Italian island of Capri, the  haunt of fashionable gay men. Now going by the name Romaine Brooks, her life and luck changed dramatically as she moved among the upper crust and began painting their portraits. Around the beginning of World War I Brooks met and fell in love with writer Natalie Barney. The two women had a non-monogamous relationship that lasted more than fifty years.








Read more about Brooks at GLBTQ and Wikipedia and view a few paintings.

Edward II Born April 25th

Edward Caernarfon, the first Prince of Wales, was born April 25th, 1284. Edward was King of England from 1307 to 1327 when he was deposed by his wife, Queen Isabella, who had loyalties to her French lineage and aspirations of her own after becoming fed up with Edward's various shortcomings. King Edward I was irritated that his son wasn't exhibiting more acceptable behavior worthy of a future king and decided on a course of action: introducing and appointing Piers Gaveston as his son Edward II's squire. The idea backfired as the two young men became nearly inseparable until the father seized an opportunity to send the son away from court and Piers. The separation lasted only a few months before Piers was banished from England. This time the separation was ended when Edward I died and the son became King Edward II, welcoming back Piers. Edward was incredibly generous in giving lavish gifts to Piers and chose to make Piers regent and in doing so, snub far more experienced barons. The contention continued to grow with with Isabella and barons as Edward continued to dote on Piers. Matters deteriorated to such a degree that Piers was kidnapped by barons and decapitated. A few years after Piers' execution, Edward became involved with a courtier named Hugh Despenser, whose father had served Edward I. Isabella was simply not going to be humiliated a second time by her husband, and concocted a reason to visit her royal family back in France, where she took a lover and hatched a plan to seize England. Despenser was taken prisoner, had his genitals cut off and burnt in front of him before he was killed. Edward was simply deposed and essentially put under house arrest in Berkeley Castle. Two attempted rescue attempts in a short period convinced the Queen's lover that Edward was a threat and Edward was dead two weeks later. It was said that Edward was killed ‘with a hoote brooche [meat-roasting spit] putte thro the secret place posterialle’.

Read more about Edward II here and here.

Pietro Arentino Born April 20th

Philip II Of Macedon Born April 18th

Philip II was born April 18th, 382 BCE in Macedon, an ancient kingdom situated on the northern and eastern sections of the Greek peninsula. Philip was youngest son of king Amyntas III and Eurydice I. The young prince was held as a hostage for several years by the city state of Thebes, who gave him an education and military training. During this period he lived with a high ranking general who was himself a vocal supporter of the Sacred Band of Thebes, a company of 150 male couples who were the elite fighting force of Thebes. The prince returned to Macedon in 364. With the death of two older brothers and further political maneuverings Philip assumed the throne of Macedon. Philip would later marry Olympias and together they had a son whom we refer to today as Alexander the Great. Like his son and a large proportion of other ancient Greek men, Philip is known to have had affairs with men. Philip seemed to have a thing for men named Pausanias, being involved with two men with this name, the first man becoming jealous and enraged to the point of assassinating Philip.

Read more at Wikipedia, GLBTQ, and Queer History.

Bessie Smith Born April 15th

Bessie Smith was born on April 15th, 1894 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In her teens, Bessie ran away from a life of poverty and joined a traveling show as a dancer and in 1912 began singing blues in the same show. Smith's real success began with her first record "Down Hearted Blues" in 1923. In 1937 Smith was working on making a comeback and was en route to Mississippi when she and Richard Morgan crashed into a truck that had pulled to the side of an unlit road. she sustained injuries to an arm and sadly died ten hours after hospital admission.

Read much more about Bessie Smith at NNDB and Out History.

John Wilmot Born on April 10th

John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, was born on April 10th, 1644 at Ditchley Manor House in Oxfordshire, England. Wilmot is the epitome of a Restoration rake (or rakehell) who indulged in wine, women, and song, though in Wilmot's case, "any port in the storm" should be substituted for women. Wilmot is considered England's first pornographer and is reputedly the author of Sodom, or The Quintessence of Debauchery (1684), the first work to be censored in England. The play is alleged to have had a single performance before a private court audience. Wilmot's life served as the basis of The Libertine, a film from 2004 starring Johnny Depp.

Read more at Rictor Norton, the Diary of Samuel Pepys, and IMDB.

Violette Le Duc Born On April 7th

Violette Le Duc was born on April 7th, 1907 in Arras, France. Violette had self esteem issues and was never able to accept herself as being more than her mother's illegitimate child; a relationship complicated by her mother's simultaneous hostility and over protectiveness. Le Duc's first sexual experiences with women happened in her boarding school, though she would marry and divorce her husband after World War II. Her writing career began accidentally after she failed an important school exam and started to work as a phone operator and proof reader and publicity writer for a publisher. Encouragement to write came from Maurice Sachs and Simone de Beauvoir.

Read more about Le Duc here and here.

Marlon Brando Born April 3rd

Marlon Brando was born on April 3rd,  1924 in Omaha, Nebraska. Known for his roles in A Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront, The Wild One. Last Tango In Paris, and The Godfather. The actor had numerous marriages and affairs with women throughout his life. Brando said Gary Carey, author of his 1976 biography "The Only Contender" : "Homosexuality is so much in fashion it no longer makes news. Like a large number of men, I, too, have had homosexual experiences and I am not ashamed. I have never paid much attention to what people think about me. But if there is someone who is convinced that Jack Nicholson and I are lovers, may they continue to do so. I find it amusing."










Read more at Wikipedia and Gay For Today.

Ferruccio Busoni Born April 1st

Ferruccio Busoni was born April 1st, 1866 in Florence, Italy. Busoni was the only child of two musical parents. Born a child prodigy, his musical debut as a pianist came at age seven. He met his wife, Gerda Sjöstrand in 1888 while teaching in Helsinki. Classical pianist Egon Petri studied under Busoni and accidentally walked in on his teacher in bed with Italian painter Umberto Boccioni. Busoni moved to Berlin in 1894 where he lived till his death from kidney disease in 1924

Read more about Busoni here.