1989: Alvin Ailey dies from AIDS-related complications.

1624: In the Virginia Colony, Richard Cornish is hanged for allegedly making advances on a ship’s steward. His conviction and execution, angrily contested by his brother and others, is the first to be recorded in the American colonies.

1933: Close to bankruptcy after repeated Nazi raids and seizures of his publications and property, Adolf Brand writes a letter to his followers announcing the end of the Homophile movement he has led.

1988: A Dallas judge sentences the killer of two gay men to 30 years in prison instead of a life sentence because, as he later tells the Dallas Times Herald, “I don’t much care for queers cruising the streets.” The Dallas Gay Alliance joins political leaders across the country in protesting the judge’s decision.

1978: Harvey Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone are assassinated by former City Supervisor Dan White.

1978: ABC airs “A Question of Love”, a TV movie about lesbian lovers in a custody battle over their children-complete with ‘parental discretion advised’ warnings.

1985: At an AIDS candlelight vigil in San Francisco, Activist Cleve Jones conceives The Names Project.

1955: In the wake of the murder of a Sioux City, Iowa, boy earlier in the year, 29 men suspected of homosexuality have been committed to mental asylums as a preventive measure authorized by the state’s “sexual psychopath” laws.

1983: A Federal judge concludes that the First National Bank of Louisville did not practice wrongful discrimination – or violate constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion – when it ordered one of its employees, Samuel Dorr, to either give up his position with gay Catholic group, Dignity, or resign from the bank.

2011: An independent arbiter rules that Baltimore County, Maryland must extend spousal benefits to the same-sex spouses of two police officers who legally married in other states.