Lovely Ashe(s)

Tennis champion Arthur Ashe died on this day in 1993, from complications from AIDS.

Ashe discovered he had contracted HIV during the blood transfusions he'd received during one of his two heart surgeries. He and his wife kept his illness private until USA Today was about to publish a story about it in mid-1992.

Two months before his death, Ashe founded the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, to address issues of inadequate health care delivery. That year he was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. He also finished, one month before his death, a memoir, Days of Grace.

Ashe, the first African American male to win a Grand Slam event, was an active civil rights supporter. He was a member of a delegation of prominent African-Americans who visited South Africa to observe political change in the country as it approached racial integration.

He was arrested in 1985 for protesting outside the South African embassy in Washington during an anti-apartheid rally, and again in 1992, outside the White House, for protesting on the recent crackdown on Haitian refugees.

Ashe once said:

"You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that."

Today's Fun Fact: The writer and philosopher Michel de Montaigne's brother, Arnaut, died of a cerebral hemorrhage after being struck in the head by a tennis ball. The event contributed greatly to Montaigne's semi-obsession with death.