David Bowie raised a few eyebrows when he posed in a dress on the cover of his 1970 album, The Man Who Sold the World. But the question on everyone's mind wasn't explicitly answered until a January 1972 issue of Melody Maker, in which Bowie told a reporter, "Yes, of course I'm gay, and always have been." In Seventies Britain, that was more than enough to fan the flames of controversy into a five-alarm blaze. Of course, it was also a good way to sell a few albums, particularly if said record was a conceptual work about a sexually ambiguous alien messiah. When The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars was released six months later, it turned Bowie into an international superstar. Bowie -- now married to model Iman (yes, a woman) -- clearly wasn't surprised, later saying that, strategically speaking, his coming-out comment was "probably the best thing I've ever said."

Next: Surprise #7