VASSILY SAPELNIKOV, Russian pianist, born (d: 1941); Sapelnikov, who became one of the foremost Russian pianists of his day, knew a good thing when he saw it. His teacher was the renowned composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, twenty-eight years his senior, who was known to enjoy performing duets with his students. Natural talent notwithstanding, young Sapelnikov made his way to the composer’s bed and to instant patronage. Sapelnikov accompanied Tchaikovsky on a tour to Germany, France and England.

LUCINO VISCONTI, Italian director, Duke of Modrone, born (d. 1976)  was an Italian theater and cinema director and writer, best known for films such as The Leopard (1963). It was not until his 1969 film, The Damned, that Visconti received a nomination for an Academy Award, for "Best Screenplay". He did not win. The film, one of Visconti's best-known works, is about a German industrialist family that slowly begins to disintegrate during World War II. The decadence and lavish beauty were archetypes of Visconti's aesthetic. Visconti's final film was The Innocent (1976), which has the recurring theme of infidelity and betrayal.

Visconti made no secret of his sexuality. His last partner was the Austrian actor Helmut Berger, who played Martin in The Damned. Berger also appeared in Visconti's Ludwig in 1972 and Conversation Piece in 1974 along with Burt Lancaster. Other lovers included Franco Zeffirelli.

JOHN LYON BURNSIDE, inventor, gay American activist, born (d: 2008);  John, or as he was known in Faerie circles “n’John” for his long-term relationship with Harry Hay – as in “Harry n’John”, was the inventor of the Teleidoscope and the Symmetricon, and was the partner of Mattachine and Radical Faerie founder, Harry Hay for 39 years.

Burnside was sent to an orphanage while still a child because he was caught in sexual play with another little boy. He served briefly in the Navy, and settled in Los Angeles in the 1940s. He married, but had no children. Burnside met Harry in 1962 at ONE Incorporated. They fell in love and became life partners. They formed a group in the early 1960s called the Circle of Loving Companions that promoted gay rights and Gay love.

In 1966 they were major planners of one of the first gay marches, a protest against exclusion of gays in the military, held in Los Angeles. In 1967, they appeared as a couple on the Joe Pyne television show. In the late 1970s, they founded, along with Don Kilhefner, the Radical Faeries. John died of brain cancer in San Francisco, where he had been tended to by members of the Circle of Loving Companions that had taken care of Harry in his final days.

CASEY DONOVAN, American Gay porn star, was born on this date nee John Calvin Culver (d: 1987); In 1971, Cal played a supporting role in a low budget sexploitation thriller film, Ginger. This in turn led to an offer to appear in Casey, a Gay porn film in which Cal played the title role, a Gay man who is visited by his fairy godmother Wanda (Cal playing a dual role in drag), and is granted a series of wishes which make him sexually irresistible to other men. Cal later took the character's name, Casey, and that of the popular singer (Donovan) to create the pseudonym under which he would appear in all his other erotic roles.

Cal first appeared as Casey Donovan in Boys in the Sand, directed by Wakefield Poole, in 1972. The film was an instant success, with even big name mainstream celebrities going to the premiere. Today the film is considered one of the great classics of male erotic cinema, although stricter obscenity guidelines in some states forced a change of the title to Men in the Sand. He was also the star of Score (1972),The Back Row, with George Payne, LA Tool & Die, with Bob Blount and Richard Locke, The Other Side of Aspen, with Al Parker and Dick Fisk, Boys in the Sand II, and Inevitable Love, with jon King and Jamie Wingo. He also featured in a number of heterosexual porn films, notably The Opening of Misty Beethoven (1975).

Outside his adult film career, Casey Donovan had a successful off-Broadway run in the play Tubstrip, written and directed by director Jerry Douglas. He had an intimate relationship with actor/writer Tom Tryon. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to run a bed and breakfast, Casa Donovan, in Key West. By 1985, Casey had contracted HIV/AIDS. He worked with many HIV/AIDS charities and counseled his fans to practice safer sex and get tested for HIV. He performed in a safe sex film for the Gay Men's Health Crisis, although he himself lived in denial that he had the syndrome, even as his health got worse. Donovan died from an AIDS-related pulmonary infection in Inverness, Florida, aged 43.

K.D. LANG, Canadian musician, born; Lang won the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance for her 1989 album, Absolute Torch and Twang. The single "Full Moon of Love" that stemmed from that album became a modest hit in the United States in the summer of 1989 and a number 1 hit on the RPM Country chart in Canada. Her cover of Cole Porter's "So In Love" appears on the Red Hot + Blue compilation album and video from 1990, a benefit for AIDS research and relief.

The album Ingenue in 1992, a set of adult contemporary pop songs that showed comparatively little country influence, contained her most popular song, "Constant Craving". That song brought her multi-million sales, much critical acclaim, and the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. Another top ten single from the record was "Miss Chatelaine". The salsa-inspired track was ironic;Chatelaine is a Canadian women's magazine which once chose Lang as its "Woman of the Year", and the song's video depicted Lang in an exaggeratedly feminine manner, surrounded by bright pastel colours and a profusion of bubbles reminiscent of a performance on the Lawrence Welk show.

In addition to her well-known musical talents, k.d. lang, who came out as a Lesbian in a 1992 article in The Advocate, has actively championed gay rights causes. She has performed and supported many causes over the years, including HIV/AIDS care and research. In 1996, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

TIM KIRKMAN, American filmmaker, born; His feature film debut, Dear Jesse, was released theatrically by Cowboy Pictures in 1998. A documentary film about the political and personal parallels between the Gay filmmaker and the notoriously anti-gay U.S. Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), Dear Jesse, made its cable television debut on HBO/Cinemax's "Reel Life" series and was nominated for an Emmy  Award in the News/Documentary Writing category in 2000. The TV broadcast version of the film featured an interview with Matthew Shepard, a college student whose murder called attention to gay-bashing and hate crimes.

His second film, the performance documentary The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, David Drake’s solo off-Broadway hit play about writer Larry Kramer, was released by FilmNext in 2000. Kirkman's narrative feature debut, Loggerheads, which he wrote and directed, premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival where it was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Feature and won prizes at several film festivals across the United States, including the Grand Jury Prize at Outfest. The film, which stars Tess Harper, Bonnie Hunt, Michael Kelly, Michael Learned, Kip Pardue, Chris Sarandon and Robin Weigert, was released by  Strand Releasing in October 2005.

PIER PAOLO PASOLINI, Italian film director, died (b. 1922); Pasolini distinguished himself as a philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure. He demonstrated a unique and extraordinary cultural versatility, in the process becoming a highly controversial figure. Though openly Gay from the very start of his career (thanks to a sex scandal that sent him packing from his provincial hometown to live and work in Rome), Pasolini rarely dealt with homosexuality in his movies. The subject is featured prominently in Teorema (1968), where Terence Stamp's mysterious God-like visitor seduces the son of an upper-middle-class family; passingly in Arabian Nights (1974), in an idyll between a king and a commoner that ends in death; and, most darkly of all, in Salo (1975), his infamous rendition of the Marquis de Sade's compendium of sexual horrors, The 120 Days of Sodom.

Penguin Books is found not guilty of obscenity in the Lady Chatterly's Lover case