19 Sunday

February

Author Carson McCullers, whose most recent biographer reveals her lesbianism and the homosexuality of her husband, born in Columbus, Georgia, 1917.

20 Monday

Washington's Birthday celebrated

Edward McCosker, a New York City policeman is dismissed from the force for "indecently feeling the privates" of male passersby while on duty, 1846.

21 Tuesday

American sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who, with Charlotte Cushman, scandalized nineteenth-century Italy by riding daily through the streets of Rome in male attire, unescorted, and astride their horses, dies in her hometown, Watertown, Massachusetts, 1908.

22 Wednesday

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, gay British army officer and founder of the Boy Scouts, who helped to perpetuate for several generations the myth that "self-abuse" leads to blindness, born in London, 1857.

23 Thursday

Pope Paul II, so effeminate that contemporaries nicknamed him "Our Lady of Pity," born in Venice, 1417.

24 Friday

Sir Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell: Trustworthy, thrifty, loyal, brave, clean, and... gay.

Claiming the "right to be insane," actress Maria Schneider checks into a Rome mental hospital to be near her lover, American heiress Patty Townsend, 1975.

25 Saturday

Philip II of Macedonia (fl. 350 B.C.), whose exact dates are lost in ancient history, but who carried with him on his military expeditions 800 young boys for his pleasure and that of his friends, is here commemorated.