'And the Band Played On' is released

The San Francisco Chronicle journalist, Randy Shilts, is the first reporter in the world to be assigned full-time to the AIDS story as it develops. His time as an investigative journalist at the paper leads him to write 'And the Band Played On', a 600-page reportage of the HIV epidemic, with special emphasis on the lack of political will to respond to what was perceived at the time as a 'gay epidemic'. The book becomes an international bestseller and is made into a movie in 1993.