It’s truly a blessed day in Gayville today: the 140th birthday of the word “homosexual,” which first appeared in a letter from Hungarian journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny to German gay activist Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. The word would become more public one year later, when Kertbeny published Paragraph 143 of the Prussian Penal Code and Its Maintenance as Paragraph 152 of the Draft of a Penal Code for the North German Confederation. Quite the mouthful, huh? [BTB]