on this day
A Captain Moonlite Pictorial: the gay bushranger
Andrew George Scott – Captain Moonlite – known in recent years as the gay bushranger – died on the gallows at Darlinghurst Gaol on 20 January 1880. Bushrangers, like outlaws in America and highwaymen in England, became the folk heroes of early Australian history – the Wild Colonial Boys. But, let’s address two contentious issues …
On this day January 4: Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood, lauded as ‘the best prose writer in English’ by Gore Vidal, died on January 4, 1986. Among his work, Goodbye to Berlin, the novel that inspired the musical Cabaret. “I am a camera,” Christopher Isherwood wrote in the first chapter of Goodbye to Berlin, “with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking… …
On this day: Alexander Brown, hanged in Sydney, 1828
Sunday, December 27 1828, the Sydney Monitor reported on the executions of seven felons the previous Monday. Among them, Alexander Brown, the first person hanged for homosexuality in New South Wales. Alexander Brown was chief officer of the whaling ship Royal Sovereign. It arrived in Sydney a month before. On the ship’s arrival, the Sydney …
On this day December 26: Pat McDonald aka Dorrie Evans
On December 26, 1940, actor Miss Patricia McDonald sped back to Sydney to perform at a matinee performance after spending Christmas Day with her parents on their yacht. That was typical of Pat McDonald, the hardworking actor who later starred in Number 96 and Sons and Daughters. In the 1970s, she shared a very public …
I Will Survive: 44 years young today. 🎶🏳️🌈🥳🏳️🌈🎂
Released October 23, 1978, ‘I Will Survive’ turns 44 today. Gloria Gaynor’s defiant anthem continues to resonate with abused and downtrodden people everywhere. Hear it as you read? Vid is down just a few sentences. 🥳 Soon after its release, ‘I Will Survive’ was embraced as an anthem and rallying call by women, queers, and …
On this day: A. L. Rowse, Homosexuals in History
A. L. Rowse, who died October 3, 1997, didn’t like people much, other than the great and mighty among whose ranks he wished to be counted. The great Elizabethan historian authored the controversial 1977 book Homosexuals in History: A Study of Ambivalence in Society, Literature and the Arts. Read Homosexuals of History free and legally …
On this day: Charles Winslow Hall, ‘exposed by illness’
A ship’s doctor noticed Charles Winslow Hall’s chest binding when he fell ill on a trip home to America. Sadly, Charles consequently died, September 29, 1901, before the ship reached Boston and newspapers went to town: Passenger Clad in Male Attire — and Bringing a Wife — Exposed by Illness. Born into a wealthy Massachusetts …
On this day: Gloria Anzaldúa, tag each piece with a label
Scholar, author and poet Gloria Anzaldúa, born September 26, 1942, grew up on the Mexico-Texas border. Living in what she called the borderlands, Gloria invested in her own conflicting and interwoven identities to address intersections of race, heritage, religion, sexuality, and language. Gloria’s father worked as a sharecropper after the loss of family land. Because, …
On this day: Balboa and the Gender Binary
On September 25, 1513, Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa became the first European to set eyes on the Pacific Ocean. But two days before, he earned himself infamy by letting his dogs lose to tear apart 40 native Americans suspected of sodomy. Vasco Núñez de Balboa was a treasure hunter of the worst possible …
On this day: Raymond Laurent, death in Venice
Besotted with a man who did not reciprocate his passion, 22-year-old Raymond Laurent died in Venice from a self-inflicted gunshot to the heart in the early hours of September 24, 1908. By chance, Oscar Wilde’s son Vyvyan Holland walked by the church of the Salute soon after and discovered the body. A friend of Marcel …
