March 30th

03-30-1964 Tracy Chapman Fast Car and Give Me One Reason, along with other singles. She is a multi-platinum and four-time Grammy Award-winning artist. Although Chapman has never discussed her sexual orientation, during the mid-1990s she dated writer Alice Walker.

3-30-1967 Gerald McCullouch – Born in Huntsville, Alabama. He is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and singer. He is best known for playing Bobby Dawson on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. McCullouch has also appeared in many commercials and print campaigns. He has also performed stand up at LA’s Improv club. He is openly gay and has directed and starred in several gay-themed productions.

03-30-1844 – 01-08-1896 Paul Verlaine – Born in Metz, France. He was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and is considered one of the greatest representatives of the end of the century in international and French poetry. He married Mathilde Mauté de in 1870. In 1871, while in Paris, he received the first letter from poet Arthur Rimbaud, age seventeen. By 1872, he had lost interest in his wife, and effectively abandoned her and their son, preferring the company of his new lover, Rimbaud. In 1872 Verlaine and Rimbaud went to London. In Brussels in July 1873 in a drunken, jealous rage, he fired two shots with a pistol at Rimbaud, wounding his left wrist, though not seriously injuring the poet. Verlaine was arrested and imprisoned at Mons, where he converted to Roman Catholicism, which influenced his work and provoked Rimbaud’s sharp criticism. His poetry was admired and recognized as ground-breaking, and served as a source of inspiration to composers such as Gabriel Fauré and Claude Debussy. Belgian-British composer Poldowski (daughter of Henryk Wieniawski) set 21 of Verlaine’s poems to music.

03-30-1953 Cydney Bernard – Born in the United States, place unknown. She had a relationship with Jodie Foster from 1992 to May 2008. She has two children with Foster. Her filmography includes production manager, producer, and production coordinator. She was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children/Youth/Family Special in 2001 for Ratz.

03-30-1987 – 02-24-2017 Ren Hang – Born in Changchun, Jilin, China. He was a Chinese photographer. He was known for his photos of nude portraits of his friends. Because his works tended to include erotic undertones, he was arrested several times by the authories. Although he was known worldwide, he never gained recognition in his home country because he was denied the opportunity to display his work. Hang was openly gay. Known to suffer from depression, he took his own life on February 24, 2017 in Beijing, China.