On This Day

October 23, 1921 – in the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne, an American officer selects the body of the first “Unknown Soldier” to be honored among the approximately 77,000 United States servicemen killed on the Western Front during World War I.

Bearing the inscription “An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War,” the chosen casket traveled to Paris and then to Le Havre, France, where it would board the cruiser Olympia for the voyage across the Atlantic. Once back in the United States, the Unknown Soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.

Kosmos

BY WALT WHITMAN

Who includes diversity and is Nature, 
Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth and the equilibrium also, 
Who has not look’d forth from the windows the eyes for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing, 
Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover, 
Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism, spiritualism, and of the æsthetic or intellectual, 
Who having consider’d the body finds all its organs and parts good, 
Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body understands by subtle analogies all other theories, 
The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States; 
Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in other globes with their suns and moons, 
Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations, 
The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.

On Diversity

“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.” 
― Maya Angelou

“There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard.  

There are not more than five primary colours, yet in combination
they produce more hues than can ever been seen.

There are not more than five cardinal tastes, yet combinations of
them yield more flavours than can ever be tasted.” 
― Sun Tzu

“It is never too late to give up your prejudices” 
― Henry David Thoreau

On This Day

October 22, 1975

Gay sergeant challenges the Air Force

Air Force Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, is given a “general” discharge by the air force after publicly declaring his homosexuality. Matlovich, who appeared in his air force uniform on the cover of Time magazine above the headline “I AM A HOMOSEXUAL,” was challenging the ban against homosexuals in the U.S. military.

In 1979, after winning a much-publicized case against the air force, his discharge was upgraded to “honorable.” In 1988, Matlovich died at the age of 44 of complications from AIDS. He was buried with full military honors at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C. His tombstone reads, “A gay Vietnam Veteran. When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one.”