Portal:Society

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. They are frequently cited as the first instance in American history when gays and lesbians fought back against a government-sponsored system that persecuted homosexuals, and they have become the defining event that marked the start of the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. The Stonewall Inn, at the time, was owned by the Mafia. It catered to an assortment of patrons, but it was known to be popular with the most marginalized people in the gay community: transvestites, effeminate young men, hustlers, and homeless youth. Police raids on gay bars were routine in the 1960s, but officers quickly lost control of the situation at the Stonewall Inn, and attracted a crowd that was incited to riot. Tensions between New York City police and gay residents of Greenwich Village erupted into more protests the next evening, and again several nights later. Within six months, two gay activist organizations were formed in New York, concentrating on confrontational tactics, and three newspapers were established to promote rights for gays and lesbians. Within a few years, gay rights organizations were founded across the U.S. and the world. Today Gay Pride events are held annually throughout the world toward the end of June to mark the Stonewall riots.

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Nighttime photo of the northern section of Times Square in New York City, featuring billboard ads for various Broadway shows. Formerly named Longacre Square, it was renamed in April 1904 after The New York Times moved its headquarters to One Times Square. Times Square is the site of the annual ball drop on New Year's Eve.

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• ... that The Art of Woo, starring Sook-Yin Lee and Adam Beach, was funded by a grant from the Canadian Film Centre's Featured Film Project?
• ... that Eugene Eisenmann worked as a lawyer before writing The Species of Middle American Birds for the Linnaean Society of New York?
• ... that the Society of Friends of the Constitution, formed in 1791 to support the Constitution of 3 May (pictured), was the first Polish political party?

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• 14 October 1946 - Foundation of the American Immigration Lawyers Association
• 25 October 1955 - Installation of the first officers of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots
• 30 October 1913 - British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by the British psychiatrist Ernest Jones (pictured back middle) as the London Psychoanalytical Society

“ A person who cannot live in society, or does not need to because he is self-sufficient, is either a beast or a god. ” — Aristotle, Politics

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Anna Anderson (1896–1984) was the best known of several impostors who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia. The real Anastasia, the youngest daughter of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia, Nicholas II and Alexandra, was murdered with her parents and siblings on 17 July 1918 by Bolsheviks in Ekaterinburg, Russia, but the location of her body was unknown. In 1920, Anderson was institutionalized in a mental hospital after a suicide attempt in Berlin. At first, she went by the name Fräulein Unbekannt (German for Miss Unknown) as she refused to reveal her identity. Later she used the name Tschaikovsky and then Anderson. In March 1922, claims that Anderson was a Russian grand duchess first received public attention. Most members of Grand Duchess Anastasia's family and those who had known her, including court tutor Pierre Gilliard, said Anderson was an impostor, but others were convinced she was Anastasia. In 1927, a private investigation funded by the Tsarina's brother, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, identified Anderson as Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness. Upon her death in 1984, Anderson's body was cremated, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon, Germany. After the collapse of Communism, the locations of the bodies of the Tsar, Tsarina and all five of their children were revealed and multiple laboratories in different countries confirmed their identity through DNA testing. DNA tests on a lock of Anderson's hair and surviving medical samples of her tissue showed that Anderson's DNA did not match the Romanov remains or living relatives of the Romanovs. Instead, Anderson's mitochondrial DNA matched that of Karl Maucher, a great-nephew of Franziska Schanzkowska. Scientists, historians, and major news agencies accept that Anderson was Schanzkowska. (Full article...)

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