CECIL RHODES, South African politician, founder of Rhodesia born (d. 1902); Like Carnegie, Nobel and many other multi-millionaires who made their fortunes through the blood of others and are remembered today for the good that has lived on after them in bequests and charities and edifices that their money endowed, Cecil Rhodes is remembered for the scholarships to Oxford that bear his name.

Although most people think that Carnegie is a hall and Nobel is a prize, it is less difficult to forget Rhodes’s South African background, not if one has read a newspaper at any time during the past fifty years.

Rhodes was the owner of the Kimberley diamond mines, which he had expanded by expropriating the land of the Matabeles by trickery, and was an active force in South African politics, where, to the chagrin of his native England, he was favorably disposed to the Boers.

Many of today’s problems in South Africa had their foundations laid during the time that Rhodes was the virtual dictator. One of the grounds for selection as a Rhodes Scholar that has almost made it impossible for most “grinds” to apply is Rhodes insistence that a candidate have a “fondness for and success in manly outdoor sports, such as football and cricket.” One wonders whether Rhodes homosexuality had anything to do with this requirement, or whether such athletic prowess was simply another demonstration of the benevolent superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race.

WANDA LANDOWSKA, Polish harpsichordist (d. 1959); Landowska is considered responsible for the restoration of the harpsichord to popularity during the 20th century. Not only was she the foremost keyboard artist of ancient music on this instrument, but the first modern works for harpsichord were written especially for her (both of them, incidentally, by Gay composers, Manuel de Falla and Francis Poulenc). Landowska performed and taught first in Berlin, then in Paris, and finally in New York and Lakeville, Connecticut. She has left behind a legacy of great recordings and scholarly publications.

Landowska, though married, was always known in the world of music as a Lesbian, although the fact was first recorded by W.G. Rogers in his book about female patrons of the arts, Ladies Bountiful (1969). The great harpsichordist apparently had no illusions about the number of homosexuals in music. She is reputed to have startled an American performer who had come to study with her, by asking him, without batting an eyelash, “Et vous êtes un pédéraste, naturellement?”

JEAN COCTEAU, French writer (d. 1963); At ten minutes to four in the morning, just outside Paris, Jean Cocteau was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Eighteen years later, according to Harold Acton, this innovator of the arts took the pulse of each of the nine Muses and prescribed the exact regimen she had to follow. Fifty-four years later, Cocteau died in 1963 at the age of 74, after 58 years of kaleidoscopic activity in the arts.

The astounding variety of his works, as poet, novelist, playwright, and filmmaker; and the contradictions and paradoxes of his private life, the charm and the nastiness, the generosity and the egotism, the poise and the anguish of an opium-addicted homosexual who was equally welcome in the aristocratic drawing rooms of Paris and the raffish waterfront bars of Toulon, and who climaxed an avant-garde life by entering the ultra-conservative precincts of the Academie Française—all this makes him impossible to summarize in a short space. [Fortunately Cocteau has been well-served in a brilliant biography by Francis Steegmuller, which should be read not only for a wonderful retelling of Cocteau’s extraordinary life, but for its introduction to the arts and culture of the modern age, Cocteau’s age.)

Still, some anecdote should be told here that at least, in part, gives some sense of the spirit of the man. Here is one that does not appear in the Steegmuller biography: In the days before the puritanical Yvonne De Gaulle moved the legendary Paris pissoirs, one of the many customs that sprang up regarding polite pissoir manners was known as the “privilège du cape.” This custom allowed a Frenchman who could not find a convenient pissoir to approach a gendarme and ask him to extend his cape so that he could take a leak behind it. One of Cocteau’s favorite amusements was to choose a handsome young cop and pretend he was drunk. With luck he could get his trouser buttons undone by the helpful gendarme—and possibly more. Uncooperative victims wound up with wet shoes.

HAROLD ACTON, American writer and dilettante (d. 1994); British writer, scholar and dilettante, among the "Bright Young Things" of British society during the 1920s, few shone quite as brightly as Harold Acton. Known for his flamboyant dandyism and his extraordinary demeanor, he was the object of frequent mention in gossip columns. He may also have been the inspiration for the notorious “Anthony Blanche,” the outré homosexual undergraduate character in Evelyn Waugh's novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), although Waugh himself claimed that Brian Howard inspired the character.

Although he was at various points in his long life a poet, novelist, historian, university lecturer, Royal Air Force officer, and philanthropist, Acton's true vocation was that of an aesthete with a mission, in his own words, to "excite rage in the hearts of the Philistines." Acton's own works include Memoirs of an Aesthete and The Bourbons of Naples, 1734-1825, a gossipy history of the Bourbon rulers of the Kingdom of Naples in the 18th century. He also wrote Peonies and Ponies, the most popular satirical book about the clash between European and Chinese culture. In 1974 he was named a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE).

When he died he left his Italian home, Villa La Pietra, to New York University. Following Acton's death at the age of 89, DNA testing revealed the existence of a half-sister, whose heirs have gone to court to challenge Acton's $500 million bequest to NYU.

“Bloody Thursday” - Police open fire on striking longshoremen in San Francisco. Gay Rights pioneers Harry Hay and Will Geer are present, both part of the organizing for the demonstration.

MEGAN ANNA RAPINOE is an out American soccer midfielder who currently plays for the Seattle Sounders Women of the W- League and is a member of the United States women’s national soccer team. She is widely known for her crafty style of play and her precise cross to Abby Wambach which tied the game in the 122nd minute of the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup quarterfinals against Brazil. She scored three goals and tallied a team-high four assists to lead the United States to a gold medal in the 2012 Summer Olympics. On July 2, 2012, Rapinoe came out as a Lesbian in an interview with Out magazine. Rapinoe confirmed that she had been dating Australian soccer player Sarah Walsh for three years.

On this date the California State Assembly passed an LGBT History Bill. According to The Advocate, the bill was sponsored by gay senator MARK LENO and titled "The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act." The act ensures that the historical contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are accurately and fairly portrayed in instructional materials by adding LGBT people to the existing list of under-represented cultural and ethnic groups already included in the state’s inclusive education requirements." The bill passed the Assembly by a vote of 49-25 after passing the Senate in April and was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.