1978: NOAA announces gender-neutral hurricane naming system
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Written by Allen Ginsberg between 1954 and 1955, “Howl”, also known as “Howl for Carl Solomon”, is a poem considered to be one of the great works of American literature and is one of the most famous writings by the Beat Generation of artists. But in 1957, the poem’s references of illicit drug use and homosexuality led to its publishers, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Shigeyoshi Murao of City Lights Books in San Francisco, to be charged with disseminating obscene literature, and both were arrested. On March 25 of that year, U.S. customs officials seized 520 copies of the poem being imported from England. At the obscenity trial, nine literary experts testified on the poem’s behalf. Supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, Ferlinghetti won the case when California State Superior Court Judge Clayton Horn decided that the poem was of “redeeming social importance.”
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