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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … April 28

1901 – Weaver W. Adams (d.1963) was an American chess master, author, and opening theoretician. His greatest competitive achievement was winning the U.S. Open Championship in 1948. He played in the U.S. Championship five times.

Adams is most famous for his controversial claim that the first move 1.e4 confers a winning advantage upon White. He continually advocated this theory in books and magazine articles from 1939 until shortly before his death. Adams' claim has generally been scorned by the chess world. However, International Master Hans Berliner in a 1999 book professed admiration for Adams, and similarly claimed that White may claim a winning advantage, albeit with 1.d4, not 1.e4.

Adams did not succeed in showing the validity of his theory in his own tournament and match play. His results suffered because he published his analysis of White's supposed winning lines, thus forfeiting the element of surprise and enabling his opponents to prepare responses to his pet lines. Future World Champion Bobby Fischer used the Adams Attack, the line Adams advocated against the Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian Defense (6.h3), with success.

Adams' parents were Frank H. Adams and Ethel Weaver Adams. He wrote that he was not directly related to Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams, but that the Adamses "in and about Massachusetts are mostly of the same family, deriving from a Henry Adams who landed in Braintree in 1644". Both Weaver and Warren were his ancestral names. His mother's side has been traced back to the founding fathers of America. His father's side has not as yet been established.

Grandmaster Arnold Denker related of Weaver that he was "a master who inherited a chicken farm and who was – so to speak – a White man clear through. He wrote a book, White to Play and Win, lived in a White house on White Street, chewed antacid pills that left the inside of his mouth perpetually White, and raised only white chickens that laid white eggs. Predictably, Adams' business was soon no more than a shell." Harry Golombek wrote in 1977 that Adams, whom he described as "author of White to Play and Win and a sodium bicarbonate addict", was on Golombek's "reserves" list for "the ten most interesting personages" from the past 100 years.

Adams was homosexual, as discussed in his autobiographical article reprinted in Chess Pride.

1920 – John Strauss (d.2011) was an American television and film composer and music editor. Strauss co-wrote the theme song for the NBC television series, Car 54, Where Are You?, with Nat Hiken. He also won a Grammy Award for his work as the producer of the soundtrack for the 1984 film, Amadeus. He was also frequently collaborated with director Woody Allen in his films, including Take the Money and Run in 1969 and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) in 1972.

Strauss was born in New York City. He served in the United States Army in both North Africa and France during World War II. He studied at Yale University with Paul Hindemith following the end of the war.

In addition to co-writing the theme song for the TV sitcom Car 54, Where Are You?, Strauss won an Emmy Award in sound editing for his work on the 1978 television movie, The Amazing Howard Hughes. He also wrote the theme song for The Phil Silvers Show. Strauss appeared briefly as an orchestra conductor in the film Amadeus.

Strauss married actress Charlotte Rae on November 4, 1951, but the marriage ended in divorce when he came out as bisexual in 1976. The couple had two sons. Strauss subsequently became life partners with artist Lionel Friedman.

"They were strong advocates for gay rights, and were arrested during a protest at the Los Angeles office of then-Gov. Pete Wilson," their son Larry said. "They also took part in national marches for gay and lesbian rights, and participated in the making of the AIDS memorial quilt."

Friedman died in 2003. A longtime resident of Los Angeles, Strauss died in that city on February 14, 2011, of Parkinson's disease, at the age of 90.

1929 – The Gay activist and writer John Paul Hudson was born on this date (d.2002). With all the humility his detractors claimed he lacks, John Paul Hudson called himself "a militant Gay journalist of the earliest days of Gay Liberation movement."

Hudson was a pioneer of the Gay press, a contributor to a half dozen of the earliest Gay periodicals beginning with Gay in 1969 and The Advocate in 1970, and including David, Gaysweek, NewsWest, Flash and Vector.

Hudson was the organiser of New York City's first gay pride march in 1970 in the wake of the Stonewall riots. In the years following Stonewall, he was a tireless organizer, his growing radicalism more and more reflected in his writing as he himself became increasingly disillusioned with the "organized Gay community" he'd helped to bring about. Like many radicals he was pure of heart and intolerant of hypocrisy. Unlike most radicals, he was not self- righteous. Like all radicals he was unwilling to allow history the necessary time to catch up with itself, insisting that all social changes must be effected NOW.

More than three decades ago, Hudson (as John Francis Hunter) gave us those eccentric and literate guides, The Gay Insider (1971) and The Gay Insider USA: A Hunter's Guide to New York and a Thesaurus of Phallic Lore (1972) and Superstar Murder?: What Happened To Good Queen Bess Her Last Night At The Cosmopolitan Baths?(1976). Without them there could have been no States of Desire, no Gayellow Pages. John Paul Hudson was, in short, an innovator, with a spirit as impatient as his flesh is attractive.

Shortly before his passing, Hudson had a book, that he had been working on for several years, published. The title is "The Lost Commandment: How to Be Gay in the 21st Century." He died in Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

1964 – David Hampton (d.2003) was an American con artist who gained infamy in the 1980s after milking a group of wealthy Manhattanites out of thousands of dollars by convincing them he was Sidney Poitier's son. His story became the inspiration for a play and later a movie, titled Six Degrees of Separation.

Hampton, eldest son of an attorney in Buffalo, moved to New York City in 1981 and stumbled upon his now-famous ruse in 1983, when he and another man were attempting to gain entry into Studio 54. Unable to do so, Hampton's partner decided to pose as Gregory Peck's son, while Hampton assumed the identity of Sidney Poitier's son. They were ushered in as celebrities.

Hampton began employing the persona of "David Poitier" to cadge free meals in restaurants. He also persuaded at least a dozen people into letting him stay with them and give him money, including Melanie Griffith; Gary Sinise; Calvin Klein; John Jay Iselin, the president of WNET; Osborn Elliott, the dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism; and a Manhattan urologist. He told some of them that he was an acquaintance of their children, some that he had just missed his plane to Los Angeles and that all his luggage was on it, some that his belongings had been stolen.

Playwright John Guare became interested in Hampton's story through his friendship with two of his duped hosts — Osborn and Inger Elliott, who had been outraged to find "David Poitier" in bed with another man the morning after they let him into their home. Six Degrees of Separation opened at the Lincoln Center in May 1990, and became a long-running success.

Hampton attempted to turn the play's success to his own advantage, giving interviews to the press, gate-crashing a producers' party, and beginning a campaign of harassment against Guare that included phone calls and death threats, prompting Guare to apply for a restraining order in April 1991, which was unsuccessful. In the fall of 1991, Hampton filed a $100 million lawsuit, claiming that the play had stolen the copyright on his persona and his story. His lawsuit was eventually dismissed.

After the play and film Six Degrees of Separation made his original con well-known, Hampton evolved other false identities and traveled extensively to find new victims. Hampton was in and out of prison in numerous states. He was interviewed during each break from incarceration by a journalist with the TV show The Justice Files, seen in the USA on the Discovery Channel.

After swearing he had changed his life, Hampton continued traveling at least as late as 1996, where he found a large number of men who, even if they'd heard of his notoriety from the East Coast, had never seen his picture or the press, allowing him to move about unnoticed and work on numerous victims at one time. In Spring 1996, Hampton arrived in Seattle, Washington, USA, posing as Antonio de Montilio, the son of a wealthy District of Columbia physician. Due to his light skin color, victims claimed he could easily be believed as the Puerto Rican he claimed. Typically, his story was colorful. Hampton claimed to have been mugged upon arriving in Seattle early for a work assignment for Vogue magazine. He was to interview Bill Gates but was suddenly in peril as his wallet was stolen and nothing could be replaced until that weekend was over. Hampton managed to woo two people within blocks of each other without their being aware that he was working them both. It is believed that he was first drawn to one victim, Justin Baird, because Baird had been identified at RPlace as the official taking in fundraising dollars from Bunny Brigade volunteers as they returned from their collection rounds.

In July 2003, David Hampton died of AIDS-related complications.

1976 – Michael Carbonaro is an American actor, magician, and improv artist. He is known for his hidden-camera "Magic Clerk" segments on The Tonight Show, in which he tricks unsuspecting customers at a convenience store. This led to a television series with a similar premise, The Carbonaro Effect, which premiered on TruTV on May 15, 2014, following a preview episode on April 1, 2014.

Born and raised in Oakdale, New York, on Long Island, the younger of two sons of an electrician father and a nurse mother, he attended Connetquot High School in Bohemia, New York. He began performing magic professionally while growing up, earning his college tuition while still in his teens. He holds a bachelor's degree in drama from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

In 2004, he was featured on Chappelle's Show on Comedy Central. Following that, Carbonaro played Andy Wilson in the 2006 comedy Another Gay Movie. For his work, he won the Outfest "Best Actor in a Feature Film" award. Carbonaro has also appeared on All My Children (2006), The Guiding Light (2006), and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2007).

Carbonaro is openly gay. He has been married to actor Peter Stickles since 2014.

1989 – Taylor Frey is an American actor. He is best known for playing Don Hagerty in It Chapter Two (2019)

Taylor attended Viewmont High School and got his bachelor's from Brigham Young University. Due to BYU's honor code forbidding "homosexual contact," he was almost expelled during his time there. The school later cleared him for lack of evidence.

Frey has appeared in G.B.F. (film), Gossip Girl, The Carrie Diaries (TV series), Gabriele Muccino's Summertime, It Chapter Two, and Days of Our Lives. He began his career as a Broadway actor. He performed in the plays: national tour of Hairspray (musical), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (musical), South Pacific (musical), Finian's Rainbow. and The View Upstairs.

Frey grew up Mormon. His hometown is in Las Vegas, Nevada. He is openly gay. Frey married American actor and singer Kyle Dean Massey in 2016 in Palm Springs, CA. The couple currently live in West Hollywood, CA.

1990 – A pipe bomb explodes in Uncle Charlie's, a Greenwich Village Gay bar, injuring three people. In protest, Queer Nation mobilizes 1,000 protestors in a matter of hours. Angry marchers fill the streets, carrying the banner "Dykes and Fags Bash Back." 12 men were charged in a terrorist conspiracy to blow up NYC landmarks. El Sayyid A. Nosair, one of the alleged leaders of the terrorist ring, attacked the bar because he objected to homosexuality on religious grounds.

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