May 10, 1933

Dr.Magnus Hirschfeld in 1919 founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Research) in Berlin.   It became renowned not only for its immense library collection, it also provided medical consultations, treatment and educational services for the 20,000 people a year who visited it.  

In addition to it's research, the institute treated STD's, advocated for sex education and contraception and the human rights and social acceptance of gay and trans people

The Institute was also doing pioneering research on trans people.   Some of the first trans surgeries were performed in the early 1930s under its auspices.  Trans people were on its staff and part of its clientèle.  Dr. Harry Benjamin, who would later expand on trans concepts he would learn there in the United States was a colleague of Dr. Hirschfeld.   .  .

But unfortunately the rise to power of the Nazi party would bring that progress to a screeching halt.    As Ernst Rohm's moderating influence weakened, the Nazis launched a campaign in February 1933 that shut down GLB clubs, banned gay rights organizations and outlawed sex publications.  The pressure got stepped up another notch a month later when Kurt Hiller, the main administrator of the institute was sent to a concentration camp.

On May 6 while Dr. Hirschfeld was on a lecture tour in the United States, the Deutsche Studentenschaft raided the Institute, seized its extensive list of names and addresses and looted its archives and library.   Four days later in the Opernplatz (now the Bebelplatz) the 20,000 books and 5000 images from it were burned along with the works of other 'un-German' books as Joseph Goebbels spoke to a crowd of 40,000 people. .

Hirschfeld never returned to Germany and tried to rebuild his beloved institute in Paris, but died of a heart attack on his birthday in 1935.


In 1934 Hitler launched Operation Hummingbird, the murderous purge against the Ernst Rohm led SA by the Gestapo and the SS.   Aided by what some historians believe the address list that was confiscated from the Institute, followed up recently passed harsh anti gay laws with round ups of gay people that hadn't already fled Germany.   Many people caught in this dragnet ended up incarcerated in slave labor or death camps.


One of the books that was burned that day in the Opernplatz was Heinrich Heine's Almansor.   It had a chillingly prophetic line in it in which he states, "Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people."

The tragedy of the May 10, 1933 book burning is that not only did Heine's quote tragically come true a few years later, a lot of research and a major chunk of TBLG history went up in flames.that day which will never be recovered.  

You are also as a transperson left to wonder how far along SRS research and gender studies would be if it had been able to build on Magnus Hirschfeld's work.

50th Anniversary of Alan Shepard's Mercury Flight

The mission only lasted 15 minutes and 28 seconds, but it put the United States in the middle of the space race with the Russians and was our first step to eventually getting to the Moon.

Naval pilot Alan Shepard was part of the first group of seven astronauts for NASA's Mercury program and in January 1961 was chosen to be the first American on  a manned space mission.     The flight was originally scheduled to take place in October 1960, but delays pushed it back to March 6, 1961.   Flight preparation delays pushed the launch date back to May 2  and a weather delay pushed it back a few more days to May 5.   In the meantime the Soviet Union beat us to that historic feat by launching Yuri Gagarin into space on his 108 minute flight on April 12. to become not only the first human in space, but the first to orbit the Earth.

When Freedom 7 launched at 9:34 AM EDT with Shepard aboard on May 5 and 45 million people watching it live on television the flight plans for the first American in space were more modest. 

It was a suborbital flight on a ballistic trajectory that reached a 116 mile height (187 km) and traveled 302 miles (486 km) down the Atlantic Missile Range before splashdown off the Bahamas   Unlike Gagarin's totally automatic flight weeks earlier, Shepard had some ability to control the Freedom 7 capsule 

With the successful conclusion of the Freedom 7 flight the race to the Moon by the superpowers was on in earnest.  Shepard would later command the Apollo 14 lunar mission and become the fifth person to walk on the Moon.    

But America's successful road to the Moon started with a suborbital flight piloted by our first man in space.

50th Anniversary Of First Manned Spaceflight

April 12 is also a noteworthy day in history for another event that all us space junkies are aware of.   

50 years ago today Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human being launched into space aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.   He orbited Earth once and returned one hour and 48 minutes later as an international hero.   

It didn't happen for the United States until NASA launched astronaut Alan Shepard, our first American man in space,  on a suborbital May 5 flight from Cape Canaveral, FL..

It was Gagarin's only spaceflight, and he tragically died in a MiG 15 plane crash in 1968 at age 34.   But since then countless men and women from various nations have followed him into the Final Frontier.

150th Annversary Of The Start Of 'The War To Perpetuate Slavery'

April 12 lives in American history as the day the 'War To Perpetuate Slavery' (aka the Civil War) started. 

Can't stand the Southern revisionist history types who are always trying to pimp the Civil War as the North starting it or it not being about slavery.

Slavery was the reason they seceded from the Union, and slavery was the reason they committed treason against the United States government by taking up arms against it..

The crisis had been building since the election of Abraham Lincoln and the secession of South Carolina on December 20, 1860.    In January 1861 the states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas joined South Carolina with four more considering joining. 

On February 9 the Confederate States of America is formed in Montgomery, AL with Jefferson Davis as President and Alexander Stephens as its vice president and begins seizing federal forts in the territory of the seceding states.  . A supply ship named The Star Of The West that attempted to resupply Fort Sumter in Charleston, SC was repulsed and forced to return to New York.    

A few weeks later on March 4 Abraham Lincoln is inaugurated as president of the United States.  During his speech he notes that he has no plans to end slavery ion the states where it exists but will not accept their secession from the Union either.   He wishes to resolve the conflict without bloodshed.  

Lincoln decides to try to resupply Fort Sumter once again and notifies the governor of South Carolina of his intentions to do so.   Brig. General Pierre Beauregard, the local Confederate commander demanded on April 10 that Major Robert Anderson surrender Fort Sumter and he refuses to do so. 

At 4:30 AM fifty Confederate guns surrounding Fort Sumter open fire on it and commence a bombardment that results in its surrender at 2:30 PM the next day.   No one was killed during the bombardment, but two Union soldiers were killed and two wounded in the April 14 surrender ceremony when a cannon exploded prematurely.

They were the first deaths of the over 600,000 to come of soldiers on both sides during the bloody four years of combat that eventually ended on April 9, 1865.

And 150 years later, we're still arguing about it to this day.

Archaeologists Find 5000 Year Old Trans Skeleton

I keep telling you peeps that transpeople are part of the diverse mosaic of life, and stumbled across a news story that reinforces that point.

Seems that archaeologists working in a Prague, Czech Republic suburb unearthed a male skeleton dating back to 2900-2500 BC with its head pointed eastward and surrounded by domestic jugs.

Those were burial rituals in that particular culture only seen previously in female graves. 

Hmm.

"From history and ethnology, we know that people from this period took funeral rites very seriously so it is highly unlikely that this positioning was a mistake," said lead archaeologist Kamila Remisova Vesinova. 


According to Corded Ware culture which began in the late Stone Age and culminated in the Bronze Age, men were traditionally buried lying on their right side with their heads pointing towards the west, and women on their left sides with their heads pointing towards the east. Both sexes would be put into a crouching position.

Repeat after me, transpeople are part of the diverse mosaic of human life

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Centennial

With the coordinated attack on unions by the GOP conservafools underway, thought you peeps might need a reminder of why unions exist, why we have all the workplace laws and safety regulations in effect and why they are necessary in the first place.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City in which 146 people died.   Many of the 500 people employed there were Jewish and Italian immigrants and women and children as young as 13 and 14 years old.



On the afternoon of March 25, 1911 as the workday was winding to an end, a fire broke out in the factory that was located on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of what is now known as the Brown Building.   Because the managers locked the stairwells and doors, many people couldn't escape the burning building and jumped to their deaths.

Of the 146 people who died, 129 were women.  max Blanck and Isaac Harris, who survived the fire by fleeing to the building's roof.were tried for first and second degree manslaughter in December 1911.   They were acquitted, but lost a subsequent civil suit in 1913.

It is also described by Frances Perkins as "the day the New Deal began."

The Brown Building became a National Historic Landmark as a result of the tragedy and the events that it triggered in its wake.  .

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire fueled the growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, improved work safety standards, tougher fire codes and the enactment of progressive labor laws in New York State.

On the anniversary of the fire members of the ILGWU read the names of the fallen in a memorial service in front of the building    During the 50th anniversary memorial service of the Triangle fire, ILGWU President David Dubinsky said, “We want a fitting memorial to the martyrs we honor today.  No better one can be found than to increase the respect for and the safety of workers.”

We are now at the centennial anniversay, and we now have Republican governors such as Wisconsin's Scott Walker wanting to take us back to the bad old days of laissez-faire capitalism, workers rights being trampled and lax or nonexistent rules and regulations for businesses.   

The centennial anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire is a warning and reminder of the type of work world we'll have if we allow that to happen.