October 23rd

October 23 is the 297th day of the year.  There are 69 days remaining until the end of the year.

1690 Riot in Haarlem after public ban on smoking. Sponsored by Newports and Kools.

1814 1st plastic surgery (nose job) is performed in England apparently on a Frenchman

1854 Gerald Rivers of The Times gives precise British positions in Krim

1958 The Smurfs, a fictional race of gay blue dwarves, later popularized in a Hanna-Barbera animated cartoon series, appear for the first time in the story Le flute B six schtroumpfs, a Johan and Peewit adventure by Peyo which is serialized in the weekly comics magazine Spirou.

1963 Neil Simon's "Barefoot in the Park" premieres in New York City

1967 "Henry, Sweet Henry" opens at Palace Theater New York City for 80 performances

1988 Robert Bork's supreme court nomination is rejected by US Senate in an overt supreme display of justice.  See October 20, 1973 

1992 Emperor Akihito becomes the first Emperor of Japan to set foot on Chinese soil--technically, a red carpet

2002 Chechen terrorists seize the House of Culture theater in Moscow and take approximately 700 theater-goers hostage.

1869 John Heisman, US football player/coach/trophy 

1925 Johnny Carson, legendary serial heterosexual US king of late night tv 

1940 Pelé [Edison Arantes do Nascimento], Brazilian soccer great 

1953 Cole Tucker, gay US pornographic actor 

1957 Jeff Quinn, gay US pornographic icon/Playgirl Man of the Month (as Rhett Routley) 

1962 Doug Flutie, fleet-footed US quarterback/musician 

1965 Augusten Burroughs, gay US writer/Running With Scissors 

1970 Grant Imahara, maybe gay US electronics wizard/Mythbuster/actor 

1974 Alex Collack, gay Russian pornographic actor  

1976 Ryan Reynolds, Canadian actor 

1978 Brian Daniels, gay US pornographic actor  

1983 Josh Strickland, gay US actor/Broadway's Tarzan 

42BCE Brutus' army is decisively defeated by Mark Antony and Octavian. Brutus becomes intimate with his own sword

1957 Christian Dior, gay French fashion designer, is auffed

1984 Oskar Werner, Austrian actor (Fahrenheit 451), burns

2004 Robert Merrill, opera singer, won't be singing the National Anthem at the World Series this year not merely because the Yankees aren’t playing.

September 15th

September 15 is the 259th day of the year.  There are 107 days remaining until the end of the year.

1776 American Revolutionary War: British forces land at Kip's Bay during the New York Campaign hoping to mount Kip Noll.

1835 HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin aboard, reaches the Galápagos Islands.

1916 "Little Willie", 1st tank is used in war at Battle of Somme near Flors, France. Here's a tank with a little willie.

1928 Alexander Fleming, a notorious messy housekeeper, discovers penicillin on some stale rye bread

1949 "Lone Ranger", a horse opera about the tender love between a disgraced Texas lawman and his hunky Indian boyfriend, premieres on ABC-TV

1951 "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" closes at Ziegfeld New York City after 740 performances, but continues in large and small tearooms across America with a variety of amateur casts

1957 "Bachelor Father" with John Forsythe premieres, and there is no public outrage that a gay man is raising a teen-aged girl.  The Mattachine Society takes this as proof that times are changing.

1982 1st issue of "USA Today", the Cliff's Notes of newspapers, is published by Gannett Co Inc

1986 1st broadcast of "LA Law" on NBC-TV and all those hawt hawt men

2008 Lehman Brothers files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. History.  It is expected that Lehman Brothers will resolve its bankruptcy and be renamed "Lamco."  I'm certain that is pronounced Lame-co.

1254 Marco Polo, maybe gay Venetian merchant/explorer 

1907 Jack Bailey, maybe gay US host of the daily quiz show "Queen for a Day'.  Oddly, "Queen for A Day" does not entail heterosexual men giving up the booty as an "experiment"

1918 {Julius] Nipsey Russell, maybe gay US comedian/poet 

1946 Tommy Lee Jones, US actor/slept with Al Gore

1960 Jack Gwaltney, US actor 

1968 Danny Nucci, Austrian-born US actor 

1968 Josh Rafter, Nigerian-born English model/Big Brother UK contestant 

1971 Josh Charles, maybe gay US actor 

1977 [Edward Thomas] Tom Hardy, English actor 

1977 Rene Haselbacher, Austrian cyclist  

1977 Cory Schneider, gay US actor/comedian (Queers of Comedy) 

1984 HRH Prince Henry of Wales, English Royal Marine 

1987 Christian Cooke, English actor 

1885 Train 1-- Jumbo, P. T. Barnum's circus elephant, 0

1963 Four girls are martyred in 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama