The Isle of Man is located in the Irish Sea between Great Britain and Ireland.  The island is not part of the United Kingdom or European Union, but has the status of crown dependency, similar to Jersey and Guernsey, with an independent administration.  Its inhabitants are British citizens.  The Isle of Man was permanently settled by Celts and fell under Viking control in 1079.  The Viking legacy is seen in many place names and the title of Tynwald, the parliament, although the Celtic Manx language (gaelg) predominated until the 19th Century, when it started to be replaced by English.  Man passed to the Scottish crown in 1266, and then to the feudal lordship of the Stanley family under the English crown.  The British crown acquired the lordship in 1764, but never incorporated the island into the United Kingdom.  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18251379   

In 1881, Tynwald, the parliament of the Isle of Man became the first national parliament to give women the chance to vote in a national election.  However, similar rules still applied:  all males, spinsters and women over the age of 21 needed to be fairly wealthy (i.e. own or occupy their own property to the value of £4 or more) to cast their vote.  This groundbreaking move later saw New Zealand (1893) and Finland (1906) as the first countries to grant full universal suffrage, giving every woman the right to vote, not just those who owned property.  Many other countries would follow suit.  A new law passed in Great Britain and Ireland. In 1918, the Representation of People Act, allowed millions of working class women to vote for the first time alongside all men, not just the wealthy.  Known as the Fourth Treaty, the act extended the franchise by 5.6 million men and 8.4 million women.  By 1928, the United Kingdom had achieved universal suffrage, granting all its adult citizens the right to vote, regardless of wealth.  https://theculturetrip.com/europe/united-kingdom/articles/the-isle-of-man-was-the-first-country-to-give-women-the-vote  

“That's all I want from life, to be allowed to write."  Neal Stephenson   https://www.sfsite.com/10b/ns67.htm

 

In science fiction, the metaverse is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world that is facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets.  In colloquial usage, a metaverse is a network of 3D virtual worlds focused on social and economic connection.  In scientific research, it is defined as 'a three-dimensional online environment in which users represented by avatars interact with each other in virtual spaces decoupled from the real physical world'.   The term metaverse originated in the 1992 science fiction novel Snow Crash as a portmanteau of "meta" and "universe".  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse   Snow Crash is by Neal Stephenson 

 

In 1853, the U.S. Minister to Mexico James Gadsden made a deal with Mexican President Santa Anna to purchase land in Mexico.  Congress approved the purchase in 1854.  James Lindsey   https://study.com/academy/lesson/gadsen-purchase-definition-summary.html  See also https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/nm-az-statehood/gadsden.html

 

The Gadsden Purchase, or Treaty, was an agreement between the United States and Mexico, finalized in 1854, in which the United States agreed to pay Mexico $10 million for a 29,670 square mile portion of Mexico that later became part of Arizona and New Mexico.  Gadsden’s Purchase provided the land necessary for a southern transcontinental railroad and attempted to resolve conflicts that lingered after the Mexican-American War.  With a great deal of difficulty resulting from the increasing strife between the northern and southern states, the U.S. Senate ratified a revised treaty on April 25, 1854.  The new treaty reduced the amount paid to Mexico to $10 million and the land purchased to 29,670 square miles, and removed any mention of Native American attacks and private claims.  President Pierce signed the treaty and Gadsden presented the new treaty to Santa Anna, who signed it on June 8, 1854.  After Gadsden’s Purchase a new border dispute caused tension over the United States’ payment, and the treaty failed to resolve the issues surrounding financial claims and border attacks.  However, it did create the southern border of the present-day United States, despite the beliefs of the vast majority of policymakers at the time who thought the United States would eventually expand further into Mexico.  https://history.state.gov/milestones/1830-1860/gadsden-purchase   

Sinclair Lewis becomes the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, “for his vigorous and graphic art of description and for his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters” (November 5, 1930)  • Genius social outcast George Eliot submits her first work of fiction, Scenes of Clerical Life, for publication (November 6, 1856)  • Noted Post-Post-Modernist Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya premieres at the Moscow Art Theatre under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski (November 7, 1899)  • A 20-year-old Robert Frost’s first published poem “My Butterfly:  An Elegy” appears in The Independent (November 8, 1894)  • The first installment of Hans Christian Andersen’s New Fairy Tales, including "The Ugly Duckling,” is published in Denmark (November 11, 1843)  •  After 22 rejections, Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 is finally published (November 10, 1961)  Literary Hub  November 5, 2023   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 2741  November 6, 2023