In ancient Greece, this was the first day of the ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES, during which the sacred objects were brought from Eleusis to Athens. The Mysteries were based on a legend concerning Demeter, the goddess of life, agriculture and fertility. According to the legend, Demeter's daughter Persephone was gathering flowers with friends one day, when she was seen by Hades, the god of death and the underworld. Hades fell in love with Persephone and kidnapped her, taking her to his underworld kingdom.

Distraught, Demeter searched high and low for her daughter. In her distress, she neglected her duties; this caused a terrible drought in which the people suffered and starved.

According to the myth, during her search, Demeter traveled long distances and had many minor adventures along the way. In one instance, she teaches the secrets of agriculture to Triptolemus. Finally, by consulting Zeus, Demeter reunites with her daughter and the earth returns to its former verdure and prosperity: the first spring. Before allowing Persephone to return to her mother, Hades gave her seeds of a pomegranate.

As a result, Persephone could not avoid returning to the underworld for part of the year. According to the prevailing version of the myth, Persephone had to remain with Hades for four months while staying above ground with her mother for a similar period. This left her the choice of where to spend the last four months of the year and since she opted to live with Demeter, the end result was eight months of growth and abundance to be followed by four months of no productivity. These periods correspond well with the Mediterranean climate of Ancient Greece.

The four months during which Persephone is with Hades correspond to the dry Greek summer, a period during which plants are threatened with drought. After the first rains in the fall, when the seeds are planted, Persephone returns from the Underworld and the cycle of growth begins anew.

The Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated Persephone's return, for it was also the return of plants and of life to the earth. Persephone had gone into the underworld (underground, like seeds in the winter), then returned to the land of the living: her rebirth is symbolic of the rebirth of all plant life during Spring and, by extension, all life on earth.

ALEXANDER HUMBOLDT, German naturalist and traveler, born (d: 1859). This is one of my personal favorite discoveries in the development of this LGBT history project. One of the geniuses of the 19^th century, he made so many contributions to science there is no way to do justice to him in this space.

From 1799 to 1804 he made an expedition with A.J. A. Bonpland to Central and South America and Cuba a journey reputed to have laid the foundations for the sciences of physical geography and meteorology. Humboldt explored the Orinoco and Amazon. He ascended the Andean peaks of Peru to study the relation of temperature and altitude, made observations leading to the discovery of the periodicity of meteor showers and the fertilizing properties of guano.

In 1808 he settled in Paris and published his findings in 23 volumes. During this period, he also established the use of isotherms; studied the origin and course of tropical storms, the increase in magnetic intensity from the equator to the poles, volcanology and pioneered the investigation of the relationship between geographical environment and plant distribution. All this before middle age. He was extraordinarily handsome according to pictures rendered of him throughout his lifetime.

He was always thought to be homosexual, with the rumors having begun with the suspicion that he and Bonpland were lovers. What was suspected seemed to be confirmed in the minds of his contemporaries when he named his valet Seifert as his sole heir.

MARGARET SANGER, American birth control advocate born (d. 1966) American birth control activist, an advocate of negative eugenics, and the founder of the American Birth Control League (which eventually becomes Planned Parenthood). Initially met with fierce opposition to her ideas, Sanger gradually won some support, both in the public as well as the courts, for a woman's choice to decide how and when she will bear children. Margaret Sanger was instrumental in opening the way to universal access to birth control. Margaret separated from her husband William Sanger in 1913.

In 1914, Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eight page monthly newsletter advocating contraception, with the slogan "No Gods and No Masters" (and coining the term "birth control") and that each woman be "the absolute mistress of her own body." She was indicted for violating postal obscenity laws in August and fled to Europe as "Bertha Watson" to escape prosecution. There, she had several affairs, including with the science-fiction author H.G. Wells and sexual psychologist Havelock Ellis. She is accused of many despicable things by the enemies of women's choice, among them a quote falsely attributed to her that likens Slavs, African Americans, and Jews to human "weeds" in need of eradication. She never said nor believed any such thing.

ERIC BENTLEY Critic, playwright & cabaret performer, born. He is 101 today. Eminent translator of the works of Bertolt Brecht and renowned critic, playwright, singer, editor and translator. He became an American citizen in 1948, and currently lives in New York City. In 1998 he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame; he is also a member of the New York Theater Hall of Fame, in recognition of his years of performances in cabarets.

In addition to teaching at Columbia University, which he joined in 1953, Bentley was a theater critic for The New Republic in the 1950s, known for his blunt style of theater criticism. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller threatened to sue Bentley for his unfavorable reviews of their work, but abandoned the attempt. Bentley met Bertolt Brecht at UCLA as a young man and is considered one of the pre-eminent experts on Brecht, whose work he has translated. He edited the Grove Press issue of Brecht's work.

In 1969, Bentley came out of the closet and declared he was gay. In an interview in the New York Times on November 12, 2006, he says he was married twice before coming out at age 53, and deciding, at the same time, to leave his post at Columbia to concentrate on his writing. He has stated his being Gay as an influence on his theater work, especially his play Lord Alfred's Lover.

He has written many critical books, including A Century of Hero-Worship, The Playwright as Thinker, Bernard Shaw, What is Theatre?, The Life of the Drama, Theatre of War, Brecht Commentaries, and Thinking about the Playwright. He has also edited The Importance Of Scrutiny (1964), a collection of pieces from a now defunct critical magazine, and Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from the Hearings Before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938–1968 (1971). His most-produced play, Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been (more properly Are You Now or Have You Ever Been: The Investigations of Show-Business by the Un-American Activities Committee 1947-1958), published in 1972, was based on these texts. Another play, Lord Alfred's Lover, treats on Oscar Wilde.

KATE MILLETT Feminist writer and activist, was born. American feminist writer and activist. She is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics. The book offered a comprehensive critique of patriarchy in Western society and literature. In particular, Millett indicted what she saw as the sexism and heterosexism of renowned novelists D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer, contrasting their perspectives with the dissenting viewpoint of homosexual author jean Genet.

Kate Millett received her BA at the University of Minnesota in 1956, where she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She obtained a first-class degree, with honors, from St. Hilda’s College, Oxford in 1958. Sexual Politics was her published PhD thesis from Columbia University in 1970. In a memorable incident, she was a guest on a late-night television program in the UK when a drunken Oliver Reed tried to kiss her, uttering the words "give us a kiss, Big Tits." Reed was made to leave the set.

Millett moved to Japan in 1961. Two years later, Millett returned to the United States with fellow sculptor Fumio Yoshimura whom she married in 1965, but they split up in the 1970s. The two divorced in 1985. She was active in feminist politics in late 1960s and the 1970s. In 1966, she became a committee member of National Organization for Women. In 1971, Millett started buying and restoring fields and buildings near Poughkeepsie, New York. The project eventually became the Women's Art Colony Farm, a community of female artists and writers.

Her book Flying (1974) tells of her marriage with Yoshimura and her love affairs with women. In 1979, Millett went to Iran to work for women's rights, was soon expelled, and wrote about the experience in Going to Iran. Sita (1977) is a meditation on Millett's doomed love affair with a female college administrator. Upon its publishing, she went from being the darling of the feminist movement to a pariah.

Perhaps because of her reluctance to become a spokesperson for the women's movement, Millett and her work failed to achieve the lasting popular recognition enjoyed by other second-wave feminists such as Steinem, Betty Friedan, and Germaine Greer. However, Sexual Politics and several other books by Millett were reissued in 2000, an event that may lead to renewed appreciation of the groundbreaking nature of her writing, art, and activism

DAVID WOJNAROWICZ artist, writer and activist, was born. Wojnarowicz was a gay painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and activist who was prominent in the New York City art world of the 1980s. He was born in Red bank, New Jersey, and later lived with his mother in New York City, where he attended the High School of the Performing Arts for a brief period.

From 1970 until 1973, after dropping out of school, he for a time lived on the streets of New York City and worked as a farmer on the Canadian border. Upon returning to New York City, he saw a particularly prolific period for his artwork from the late 1970s through the 1980s. During this period, he made Super-8, such as Heroin, began a photographic series of Arthur Rimbaud, did stencil work, played in a band called 3 Teens Kill 4, and exhibited his work in well-known East Village galleries.

In 1985, he was included in the Whitney Biennial, the so-called Graffiti Show. In the 1990s, he fought and was issued an injunction against Donald Wildmon and the American Family Association on the grounds that Wojnarowicz's work had been copied and distorted in violation of the New York Artists' Authorship Rights Act. See Wojnarowicz v. American Family Association, 745 F.Supp 130 (1990). Wojnarowicz died of AIDS on July 22, 1992.

JOHN LYON BURNSIDE III died on this date (b: 1916) He was the inventor of the teleidoscope, the Darkfield Kaleidoscope and the Symmetricon and, because he rediscovered the math behind kaleidoscope optics, for decades, every maker of optically correct kaleidoscopes sold in the U.S. paid him royalties. He was the life partner of Harry Hay for 40 years, from 1962 until Hay's death in 2002. John lived in San Francisco, California until his death from complications of brain cancer, aged 91.

Burnside and Hay 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 rights march, a protest against exclusion of homosexuals from the military, held in Los Angeles. In 1967, they appeared as a couple on the Joe Pyne television show. In the late 1970s, they imagined the Radical Faeries along with Don Kilhefner.

He and Harry were seen as such a singular unit that he became known in some circles as “n’John” as in “Harry ‘n John”” A sweeter man I have never met.