Top Ten LGBTQ People in History
His relationship with von Katte was tragic. They planned to run away to Britain because Frederick's father would violently beat him. However, they were caught, and both were punished. Von Katte's punishment was death, and Frederick was forced by his father to watch his lover's execution. During the execution, Frederick begged, "Please forgive me, my dear Katte, in God's name, forgive me!" Hans simply replied, "If I had a thousand lives, I would sacrifice them all for you. There is nothing to forgive, I die for you with joy in my heart!" Von Katte's death deeply affected Frederick, leading him into a period of depression. Some historians believe this event contributed to his ruthlessness in battle.
Prussian polymath Alexander von Humboldt led scientific expeditions to South America and Central Asia. He traveled with young companions, studying botany, geology, and geography. Humboldt had many strong male friendships and romances with men, including Wilhelm Gabriel Wegener and Reinhardt von Haeften. To the latter, he declared, "Even if you must refuse me, treat me coldly with disdain, I should still want to be with you. The love I have for you is not just friendship or brotherly love, it is veneration."
He was the main organizer of the black civil rights movement, especially the March on Washington. He was openly gay but kept it out of the limelight.
English mathematician, astronomer, and physicist Isaac Newton developed the principles of modern physics, including the laws of motion. He also helped develop calculus and is credited as one of the great minds of the Scientific Revolution. There has been speculation about him engaging in romantic relationships with his roommate John Wickens and Swiss mathematician Nicholas Fatio de Duillier.
An orphan from the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean, Alexander Hamilton is one of the seven Founding Fathers of the United States. He helped write 51 of the 85 articles in The Federalist Papers and was the first Secretary of the Treasury. During the American Revolutionary War, as part of Washington's Continental Army, he met John Laurens. They shared a very intimate friendship, evident in the very suggestive letters Hamilton wrote to Laurens.
"Cold in my professions, warm in my friendships, I wish, my dear Laurens, to make it clear to you, through actions rather than words, that I love you." - A famous quote from one of Hamilton's letters to fellow soldier and abolitionist John Laurens.
He was an aesthete and witty conversationalist who used subversive paradoxes in his plays. He had an affair with Lord Alfred Douglas while being married with two kids and was later imprisoned for his homosexuality.
Although part of a prominent family with strong ties to its community, Dickinson lived much of her life in reclusive isolation .
While Dickinson was a prolific... read more
She lived a very private life, secretly writing more than a thousand poems, characterized by lyrical intensity and paradoxes. She had an intimate relationship with Susan Gilbert Dickinson, to whom she wrote many passionate love letters.
He was a Major General who helped train George Washington's Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Before this, he was convicted of sodomy in his country of Prussia. He still engaged in homosexual activities with William North, Benjamin Walker, and Peter Stephen Du Ponceau while training the Continental Army.
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A famous 17th-century French opera singer who once took the holy vows to enter a convent just so she could have sex with a friend who had become a nun. She also had a habit of seducing women at parties, which would lead their husbands to challenge her to a duel. She was an expert duelist and killed 10 men like this.
Garbo was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and received an honorary one in 1954 for her "luminous and unforgettable... read more
A Native American "two-spirit" biological man who dressed mainly in women's attire. Their ambiguous sexuality marked a special link to the spirit world. An anthropologist invited them to Washington DC in 1866, where they were feted, photographed, and widely discussed.