HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, born, (d: 1875); Forget the silly Danny Gay, um...er...Kaye movie of yesteryear in which Hans sings to inchworms and measures all the marigolds. Anderson was an odd duck, all right, but odd in ways not even hinted at in that Technicolor monstrosity.

The real story, on the contrary, might actually make a good film. One can already see the scene between his poor parents as they realize something is a little strange about the lad. When the other kids are out doing masculine things, like circle jerks and pulling wings off flies, all he wants to do is sew clothes for his dolls. 

Then we can have the scene where he decides to leave his place as an apprentice to a tailor to try to make it as an opera singer. He’s really torn about leaving, because he just loves being surrounded by all those clothes to sew. Then there’s his time of starvation on the road until he’s taken in by two Gay musicians who see to it that the hunky young man is plenty stuffed.

Passed on to a middle-aged poet, and getting a little wiser, he decides it’s much more fun being kept than taking dancing lessons, as he had originally wanted, in return for services rendered. Eventually he makes it big as the greatest fairy tale writer in Europe, and the entire cast joins in the great production number, “It Takes One to Write One.”

SERGEI LIFAR, Russian dancer, born (d: 1986); Lifar was the last of Diaghilev’s dancer-lovers, and probably the most spiritually faithful. Although he had the talent, the body and the looks to conform to the great impresario’s idea of perfection, one slight fault had to be corrected before the honeymoon – and before the stardom that marriage brought. “Don’t sit in the sun. The paraffin will melt,” his colleagues teased. But the nose job had its intended results. Lifar, just twenty, was now the lead dancer of the Ballet Russes and Mme. Diaghilev, as well.

SIR ALEC GUINNESS, English actor (d. 2000); Guinness married the artist, playwright, and actress, Merula Salaman in 1938, and they had a son in 1940, Matthew Guinness, who later became an actor.

All well and good, of course. But in his biography Alec Guinness: The Unknown, Garry O'Connor reveals that Guinness was arrested and fined ten guineas for a homosexual act in a public lavatory in Liverpool in 1946. Guinness avoided publicity by giving his name as "Herbert Pocket" to both police and court. The name Herbert Pocket was taken from the character in Charles Dickens' Great Expectations that Guinness had played on stage in 1939 and was also about to play in the film adaptation. The incident did not become public knowledge until April 2001, eight months after his death. The authenticity of this incident has been doubted, however, including by Piers Paul Read, Guinness's official biographer, who believes that Guinness was mixed up with John Gielgud, who was infamously arrested for such an act at the same period of time, though Read nonetheless acknowledges Guinness's essential bisexuality.

CAMILLE PAGLIA, American feminist writer, born; an American social critic, author and teacher. Her book, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson , published in 1990, became a bestseller. She is a professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA.

She has been variously called the "feminist that other feminists love to hate," a "post-feminist feminist," "one of the world's top 100 intellectuals" (which, along with $2.50 will, I believe, get you a ride on the NY subway system....if it's running) by the UK's Prospect Magazine, and "a feminist bisexual egomaniac." Paglia describes herself as a feminist and as a Democrat who voted for Bill Clinton and Ralph Nader, and even campaigned for John F. Kennedy as an adolescent. Her vocal skepticism of global warming, however, indicates her willingness to break with liberal orthodoxies.

Her views on the legalization of recreational drugs and prostitution, and on the relaxation of sexual consent laws, are more libertarian. (Won't someone save us from Ayn Rand and her children?)

She is a strong critic of much of the feminism that began with Betty Friedan's 1962 The Feminine Mystique and compared feminists — whom she considered to be victim-centered — to the Unification Church. At the same time Paglia's embrace of fetishism, pornography, sex work and most prominently, male homosexuality, effectively puts her at odds with the "family values" of American social conservatives.

RON PALILLO (d: 2012) was born today. An American television and film actor, perhaps best known for his role as high school student Arnold Dingfelder Horshack on the ABC sitcom Welcome Back Kotter, which aired from 1975 to 1979. After Welcome Back, Kotter, Palillo appeared in supporting roles in various television series and performed the voice in various animated series such as Laverne and Shirley in the Army, Darkwing Duck, and Rubik: The Amazing Cube where he played the lead character. In 1996, Palillo played himself in several episodes of Ellen, where he became the love interest of Ellen's friend Audrey. He also played a small part on Friday the 13^th Part VI.

Outside of acting, Palillo was also an artist, having provided the art for two children's books: The Red Wings of Christmas and A Gift for the Contessa. He is credited on these as "Ronald G. Paolillo", which he used in memory of his father. Palillo returned to New York in 1991, and played roles as Mozart in Amadeus, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls..

In 2005, his first full length play, The Lost Boy, the true story of Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie, was produced in New York State. Palillo was a teacher at G-Star School of the Arts for Motion Pictures and Broadcasting in Palm Springs. His partner of 41 years was Joseph Gramm.

On this date KATHY KOZACHENKO'S successful bid for a seat on the Ann Arbor, Michigan city council made her the first openly Gay or Lesbian American to win public office in the United States. Although Harvey Milk is many times mistaken for this historic first, Kozachenko's election predates his win by a few years. But you know, she's a woman, soooooo...

Kozachenko joined the Human Rights Party in the early 1970s. The differences between the platforms of the HRP and local Democrats dwindled, yet "Kozachenko's run as an out Lesbian ... provided her with a distinction to set her apart". She would go on to comment that "'the Democratic Party started to look and sound like us, so the students found no need to vote for us if they were saying the same thing, so we found something different to say'".

As an out student at the University of Michigan, Kozachenko rallied student radicals. They supported her progressive agenda, which included a fine of no more than five dollars for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

Another part of her platform included "a ceiling on the amount of profit a landlord could make from rents on a building". Running solely against a liberal Democrat, Kozachenko was elected to the Ann Arbor City Council on April 2nd, 1974. She won the seat "representing the city's second ward by fifty-two votes".

Kozachenko's HRP predecessors on the city council, Nancy Wechsler and Jerry DeGrieck, had come out as a Lesbian and a Gay man during their first and only terms on city council, thus becoming the first openly LGBT public-office holders in the United States. However, Wechsler and DeGrieck did not run for office as an open LGBTQ individual.

Kozachenko is overlooked as the first openly Gay elected official in the United States. On the day after the election in 1974, The New York Times ran an article that ignored the election of Kozachenko, and instead focused on the marijuana tax referendum. When listing the winning candidates, the Times depicted her as "a student at University of Michigan who described herself as a Lesbian". 

In 2008, a reporter at the Washington Post misguidedly commended Gus Van Sant's Milk for "its poignancy in telling the story of the first openly Gay elected official in the United States, Harvey Milk". It was three days before LGBTQ historian Ron Schlittler set the record straight. (You’ll pardon the expression.)

Kozachenko served one two-year term before leaving politics. She continued to work as an activist in Brooklyn and then Pittsburgh. She would later meet her long-time partner, MaryAnn Geiger (who died in 2010), and have one son.