Leelah Alcorn (November 15, 1997 – December 28, 2014) was an American transgender girl whose suicide attracted international attention. At age 14, she came out as transgender to her parents, and at 16, she asked to undergo transition treatment; instead, they sent her to conversion therapy. After she revealed her attraction toward males to her classmates, her parents removed her from school and revoked her access to social media. She killed herself by walking into highway traffic. In her suicide note, Alcorn blamed her parents for her loneliness and alienation, and asked people to pay more attention to discrimination and abuse faced by transgender youth. LGBT rights activists cited the incident as evidence of the problems she wrote about, and vigils were held in her memory. Petitions that called for the establishment of "Leelah's Law", a ban on conversion therapy in the U.S., received a supportive response from President Barack Obama. Within a year, her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, criminalized conversion therapy.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Leelah_Alcorn

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

484:

Alaric II succeeded his father Euric as king of the Visigoths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaric_II

1612:

Galileo became the first person to observe the planet Neptune, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a fixed star. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune

1895:

History of film: Using their cinematograph in Paris, the Lumière brothers showed motion pictures to a paying audience for the first time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re

1943:

World War II: After eight days of brutal house-to-house fighting, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division captured Ortona, Italy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ortona

2014:

The passenger ferry MS Norman Atlantic caught fire in the Adriatic Sea, resulting in nine deaths, with a further 19 missing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Norman_Atlantic

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

wurley: 1. (chiefly South Australia) An Australian indigenous shelter made from small branches with the leaves still attached. 2. (chiefly South Australia, by extension) A settlement made up of such shelters. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wurley

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Young man, in mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.   --John von Neumann https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann