MAY SARTON, American poet and author, was born (d: 1995); May Sarton wrote some of the most beautiful lyric poetry of the 20th century. Her poems are accessible, free of self-conscious experimentation, and divorced from membership in any particular school of poetry. Many of them are pellucid reflections of the Lesbian experience, as are her novels. Her reputation was soundly established before she published Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965).

She feared, rightly, that writing so strongly about Lesbianism would lead to a diminution of the value of her work. “The fear of homosexuality is so great that it took courage to write Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing,” she said in the Journal of Solitude (1973), “to write a novel about a woman who is not a sex maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive, to portray a homosexual who is neither pitiable nor disgusting without sentimentality…” Read this remarkable novel and read the Journal, where May Sarton reveals, not surprisingly, that she is Mrs. Stevens.

WILLIAM INGE, American playwright was born (d. 1973); An American playwright and novelist, whose works typically feature solitary protagonists encumbered with strained sexual relations. In the early 1950s, he had a string of memorable Broadway productions, and one of these, Picnic, earned him a Pulitzer Prize. With his portraits of small-town life and settings rooted in the American heartland, Inge became known as the "Playwright of the Midwest." The Last Pad is one of three of Inge's plays that either have out Gay characters or address homosexuality directly. The Boy in the Basement, a one-act play written in the early 1950s, but not published until 1962, is his only play that addresses homosexuality overtly, while Archie in The Last Pad and Pinky in Where's Daddy? (1966) are Gay characters. Inge himself was closeted.

Inge's The Last Pad premiered in Phoenix, Arizona in 1972. Originally titled The Disposal, the world premiere of The Last Pad was produced by Robert L. (Bob) Johnson and directed by Keith A. Anderson through the Southwest Ensemble Theatre. The production starred Nick Nolte and included Jim Matz and Richard Elmore (Elmer). The production moved to Los Angeles and opened just days after Inge committed suicide.

During the early 1970s, Inge lived in Los Angeles, where he taught playwriting at UC Irvine. His last several plays attracted little notice or critical acclaim, and he fell into a deep depression, convinced he would never be able to write well again. He committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning in 1973.

CHRISTINE JORGENSEN, American transsexual, died on this date (b. 1926); Jorgenson was famous for having been the first widely-known individual to have sex reassignment surgery — in this case, male-to-female, or “MTF.” Returning to New York after her military service and increasingly concerned over what one obituary called her "lack of male physical development," Jorgensen heard about the possibility of sex reassignment surgery, began taking the female hormone ethinyl estradiol on her own, and researched the subject with the help of Dr. Joseph Angelo, a husband of one of Jorgensen's classmates at the Manhattan Medical and Dental Assistant School.

She intended to go to Sweden, where she had found the only doctors in the world performing this type of surgery at the time. At a stopover in Copenhagen to visit relatives, however, Jorgensen met Dr. Christian Hamburger, a Danish surgeon and specialist in sex-reassignment surgery. She ended up staying in Denmark and under Dr. Hamburger's direction was allowed to begin hormone replacement therapy and eventually underwent a series of surgeries. During this first round of surgeries in Copenhagen, Jorgensen was castrated.

According to an obituary, "With special permission from the Danish minister of justice, Jorgensen had his testicles removed first and his still-undeveloped penis a year later. Though technically a eunuch, Jorgensen received large doses of hormones, which led to changes in his body contours and fat distribution, and with help from the American ambassador had her passport changed to identify her as female and began life as a woman." Several years later Jorgensen obtained a vaginoplasty, when the procedure became available in the U.S., under the direction of Dr. Angelo and a medical advisor Harry Benjamin. Jorgensen chose the name Christine in honor of Dr. Hamburger and became a spokesperson for transexual and transgender people.