Trivia

• Pride month is celebrated to commemorate the Stonewall Riots which occurred in New York city in 1969. The riots were a series of spontaneous demonstrations by members of the LGBTQIA+ community in response to a police raid at the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar at the time. The events of that night marked a turning point in the fight for LGBTQIA+ rights and paved the way for the establishment of Pride parades around the world.
• The iconic rainbow flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, an artist and LGBTQIA+ activist. The original flag featured 8 colors - hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, blue for harmony, and violet for spirit.
• With time and reason, the flag evolved and today has six colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.
• The gender-neutral pronoun ‘they’ was first used as early as 1386 to describe someone in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and in famous literary works like Shakespeare's Hamlet in 1599.
• The first official Pride March of India was held in Kolkata in 1999 and saw a modest turnout of around 15 to 20 participants. Many participants wore masks or veils to conceal their identities due to the prevailing social stigma surrounding homosexuality at the time.