ALEXANDER THE GREAT is born in Macedonia. One of the greatest generals of all time, Alexander's love of Hephaestion is the stuff of legend.

On this date the American poet EMILY DICKINSON died in Amherst, Massachusetts. In her twenties, Emily led a busy social life, but she became more reclusive with each passing year. By her thirties, she stayed to her home and withdrew when visitors arrived. She developed a reputation as a myth, because almost never seen and, when people did catch sight of her, she was always wearing white.

But while she withdrew from physical contact with people, she did not withdraw from them mentally. Emily was an avid letter-writer who corresponded with a great number of friends and relatives. A thousand of these letters (a portion of what she wrote) survived her death, and they show her letter writing to be very similar to her poetic style--enigmatic and abstract, sometimes fragmented, and often forcefully sudden in emotion. 

Emily often included poetry with her letters to friends. Her friends encouraged her to publish, but after an attempt to do so in 1860 (when the publisher suggested she hold off) Emily did not appear to try again. The eight poems that were published in her lifetime were primarily poems submitted by her friends without her permission. Her death revealed 1768 more poems.

The idea of finding out who inspired Emily to write so prolifically has intrigued literary researchers for decades. For a while, the popular assumption was that she had a male mentor encouraging her, and that this is perhaps the person she addressed in three letters written to "Master."

Some have speculated she was in love with Samuel Bowles (editor of a prominent local newspaper) for a time, and others speculate that she had a relationship with Judge Otis Lorde, and either of these men could have been the mysterious "Master." She may have been in love with both or either of these men; it's hard to confirm or deny the nature of her involvements with them. But the evidence that is available seems to show that the person who most affected her life and her work was Susan Gilbert--friend, eventual sister-in-law, and Emily's passionate love. This is the woman about which Emily wrote hundreds of poems, and the person who received three times more poems of any of Emily's other friends.

Susan and Emily probably met at Amherst. They were close friends from the beginning, sharing similar interests and desires. Emily trusted Susan completely, and was very affectionate toward Susan in all their correspondence. While Susan seems to have responded initially, Emily's attention turned cloying when Susan became engaged to Austin Dickinson, Emily's brother. For two years, their correspondence stopped completely. When Susan and Austin moved next door, their correspondence resumed again, and Emily continued her expressions of worshipful love.

Feminist scholars who have examined Emily's letters from a Lesbian viewpoint note that her letters move beyond romantic friendship to the blatantly passionate. It isn't possible to know how Susan responded to Emily's proclamations of love, her desires to hold and kiss Susan, or her sorrow at being without Susan. When Emily died, all of Susan's letters were destroyed.

Dickinson was buried, laid in a white coffin with vanilla-scented heliotrope, a Lady's Slipper orchid and a "knot of blue field violets" placed about it. The funeral service, held in the Homestead's library, was simple and short; Higginson, who had only met her twice, read "No Coward Soul Is Mine", a poem by Emily Brontë that had been a favorite of Dickinson's. At Dickinson's request, her "coffin [was] not driven but carried through fields of buttercups" for burial in the family plot at West Cemetery on Triangle Street.

In New York, SUSAN B. ANTHONY and ELIZABETH CADY STANTON formed the National Woman Suffrage Association on this date. The National Association was created in response to a split in the American Equal Rights Association over whether the woman's movement should support the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Its founders, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, opposed the Fifteenth Amendment unless it included the vote for women. Men were able to join the organization as members; however, women solely controlled the leadership of the group. The NWSA worked to secure women's enfranchisement through a federal constitutional amendment. 

Contrarily, its rival, the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA), believed success could be more easily achieved through state-by-state campaigns. In 1890 the NWSA and the AWSA merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).

Germany's PARAGRAPH 175 was adopted. (known formally as §175 StGB; also known as Section 175 in English) it was a provision of the German Criminal Code that made homosexual acts between males a crime.

The statute was amended several times. The Nazis broadened the law in 1935 and increased §175 StGB prosecutions by an order of magnitude; thousands died in concentration camps, regardless of guilt or innocence. East Germany reverted to the old version of the law in 1950, limited its scope to sex with youths under 18 in 1968, and abolished it entirely in 1988.

West Germany retained the Nazi-era statute until 1969, when it was limited to "qualified cases"; it was further attenuated in 1973 and finally revoked entirely in 1994 after German reunification.

Canada decriminalizes private same-sex acts.

TODAY'S GAY WISDOM

 GIVE UP!

 15 Things To Give Up To Be Happy

1. Give up the need to always be right

 There are so many of us who can’t stand the idea of being wrong – wanting to always be right – even at the risk of ending great relationships or causing a great deal of stress and pain, for us and for others. It’s just not worth it. Whenever you feel the ‘urgent’ need to jump into a fight over who is right and who is wrong, ask yourself this question: “Would I rather be right, or would I rather be kind?” Wayne Dyer. What difference will that make? Is your ego really that big?

2. Give up the need for control

Be willing to give up your need to always control everything that happens to you and around you – situations, events, people, etc. Whether they are loved ones, coworkers, or just strangers you meet on the street – just allow them to be. Allow everything and everyone to be just as they are and you will see how much better will that make you feel.“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond winning.” Lao Tzu

3. Give up on blame

 Give up on your need to blame others for what you have or don’t have, for what you feel or don’t feel. Stop giving your powers away and start taking responsibility for your life.

4. Give up self-defeating self-talk

 Oh my. How many people are hurting themselves because of their negative, polluted and repetitive self-defeating mindset? Don’t believe everything that your mind is telling you – especially if it’s negative and self-defeating. You are better than that.

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive.” Eckhart Tolle

5. Give up limiting beliefs

…about what you can or cannot do, about what is possible or impossible. From now on, you are no longer going to allow your limiting beliefs to keep you stuck in the wrong place. Spread your wings and fly!

“A belief is not an idea held by the mind, it is an idea that holds the mind” Elly Roselle

6. Give up complaining

 Give up your constant need to complain about those many, many, maaaany things – people, situations, events that make you unhappy, sad and depressed. Nobody can make you unhappy, no situation can make you sad or miserable unless you allow it to. It’s not the situation that triggers those feelings in you, but how you choose to look at it. Never underestimate the power of positive thinking.

7. Give up the luxury of criticism

 Give up your need to criticize things, events or people that are different than you. We are all different, yet we are all the same. We all want to be happy, we all want to love and be loved and we all want to be understood. We all want something, and something is wished by us all.

8. Give up the need to impress others

 Stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not just to make others like you. It doesn’t work this way. The moment you stop trying so hard to be something that you’re not, the moment you take off all your masks, the moment you accept and embrace the real you, you will find people will be drawn to you, effortlessly.

9. Give up resistance to change

 Change is good. Change will help you move from A to B. Change will help you make improvements in your life and also the lives of those around you. Follow your bliss, embrace change – don’t resist it.
“Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls” Joseph Campbell

10. Give up labels

Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind, little by little. Minds only work when open. “The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.” Wayne Dyer

11. Give up on fears

Fear is just an illusion, it doesn’t exist – you created it. It’s all in your mind. Correct the inside and the outside will fall into place. “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Franklin D. Roosevelt

12. Give up excuses

Send them packing and tell them they’re fired. You no longer need them. A lot of times we limit ourselves because of the many excuses we use. Instead of growing and working on improving ourselves and our lives, we get stuck, lying to ourselves, using all kind of excuses – excuses that 99.9% of the time are not even real.

13. Give up the past

I know, I know. It’s hard. Especially when the past looks so much better than the present and the future looks so frightening, but you have to take into consideration the fact that the present moment is all you have and all you will ever have. The past you are now longing for – the past that you are now dreaming about – was ignored by you when it was present. Stop deluding yourself. Be present in everything you do and enjoy life. After all life is a journey not a destination. Have a clear vision for the future, prepare yourself, but always be present in the now.

14. Give up attachment

This is a concept that, for most of us is so hard to grasp and I have to tell you that it was for me too, (it still is) but it’s not something impossible. You get better and better at with time and practice. The moment you detach yourself from all things, (and that doesn’t mean you give up your love for them – because love and attachment have nothing to do with one another,  attachment comes from a place of fear, while love… well, real love is pure, kind, and self less, where there is love there can’t be fear, and because of that, attachment and love cannot coexist) you become so peaceful, so tolerant, so kind, and so serene. You will get to a place where you will be able to understand all things without even trying. A state beyond words.

15. Give up living life to other people’s expectations

Way too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think is best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need….and eventually they forget about themselves.  You have one life – this one right now – you must live it, own it, and especially don’t let other people’s opinions distract you from your path.