Curated category
Historical figures with ambiguous or disputed sexuality
- Leonardo da VinciLeonardo da Vinci left behind 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, and almost none of it was written the way you would expect.
- Alexander the GreatAlexander the Great was undefeated in battle, and by the age of 30 he had built one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern…
- Friedrich NietzscheOn the 3rd of January 1889, in the streets of Turin, Friedrich Nietzsche caused a public disturbance and two policemen approached him.
- Sexuality of William ShakespeareWilliam Shakespeare wed Anne Hathaway at the age of 18. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage license on the 27th of November…
- Katharine HepburnKatharine Hepburn won four Academy Awards for Best Actress, a record no one else has matched. She wore trousers before women commonly did.
- William III of EnglandWilliam III of England was born eight days after his father died. That timing shaped everything. When stadtholder William II, Prince of Orange died of…
- Pope Julius IIPope Julius II died on the night of the 20th to the 21st of February 1513, after months of slow decline he had predicted with unsettling clarity.
- NeroNero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus died on the 9th of June AD 68 with a private secretary's hand helping him drive a blade home.
- Malcolm XMalcolm X was pronounced dead at 3:30 pm on the 21st of February 1965, shortly after gunmen opened fire on him at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan.
- James BuchananJames Buchanan was born on the 23rd of April 1791, in a log cabin at the Stony Batter farm near Cove Gap in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania.
- HadrianHadrian was born Publius Aelius Hadrianus on the 24th of January 76, in the town of Italica in southern Spain, far from the city he would one day rule.
- Christopher MarloweChristopher Marlowe was baptised on the 26th of February 1564 at St George's Church in Canterbury, just two months before William Shakespeare was baptised in…
- CaligulaCaligula, the third Roman emperor, came to power in AD 37 at age 24, welcomed by a city delirious with relief. Tiberius, his grim predecessor, had spent his…
- Francis BaconFrancis Bacon dictated his last letter from a borrowed bed in Highgate, his fingers, he wrote, so disjointed with sickness that he could not steadily hold a…
- Henry Stuart, Lord DarnleyHenry Stuart, Lord Darnley was born at Temple Newsam in Leeds during the year 1546. His father Matthew Stewart held the title of Earl of Lennox while his…
- ElagabalusElagabalus became Roman emperor at fourteen years old, declared so by a single legion at sunrise on the 16th of May 218.