Women First Given Vote......By Accident

New Zealand was the first country in the world to grant national voting rights to women, when the Governor, Lord Glasgow, signed the Electoral Act into law on 19 September 1893.

Australia, however, was the first country in the world to give women both the right to vote in federal elections and the right to be elected to parliament on a national basis. Britain and the United States, on the other hand, did not give women the right to vote until after the First World War. Women in Saudi Arabia did not get to vote until 2015.

But women in Victoria, Australia, actually had the right to vote back in 1863, when the Electoral Act 1863 gave "all persons" listed on local municipal rolls the right to vote in elections. Some women in Victoria obviously realized they were actually "persons", and so, they took advantage of this law and voted in local elections. A newspaper article reported:

“At one of the polling booths in the Castlemaine district a novel sight was witnessed. A coach filled with ladies drove up, and the fair occupants alighted and recorded their votes.”
The Argus, 5 November 1864, p 4.

The accidental enfranchisement of women was taken away in 1865 when the law was changed.

Suffragette movement in Queensland, 1909.

The Unfortunate Inventor

The American Doctor Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889 –1944) was a mechanical engineer and chemist; he was also an inventor, but not a very good one in the end.

Whilst working for a subsidiary of General Motors in 1911, Midgley discovered that the addition of Tetraethyllead to gasoline prevented "knocking" in internal combustion engines. But instead of saying that lead was being added to petrol, the company decided to call the additive "Ethyl".

Then in 1923, Midgley had to take a bit of a holiday because he had lead poisoning. Luckily,  Midgley was a grown man, because developing children who are exposed to lead are often cognitively impaired, with lower intelligence, exhibiting aggressive behaviour, because lead competes with calcium in the cell, which is very important for brain development.

Interestingly, the lead-crime hypothesis proposes that the decrease in crime in America that began in the mid-1990s and continues today, may be due to lead being removed from petrol.

After this, Midgley was involved in the invention of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), called Freon. This substance was used refrigerators, inhalers and aerosol spray cans. Later we found out that these type of gases have depleted the ozone layer and contributed to the greenhouse effect, which is impacting natural ecosystems and biodiversity and a factor behind climate change.

These two inventions have now been banned. J. R. McNeill, an environmental historian expressed the opinion that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history."

Midgley died in 1944 when he became entangled in one of his own inventions, which he had created after polio left him disabled. The system of strings and pulleys that he devised to help others lift him from bed, strangled him. At least he tried.


Books To Read

Mistakes That Worked: 40 Familiar Inventions & 40 Familiar Inventions & How They Came to Be, by Charlotte Foltz Jones.

Off With The Fairies

I have never believed in any sort of supernatural beings; people are different, after all. But I have always been mystified as to why the various gods seem only able to communicate their contradictory ideas and messages through ancient books and inside the heads of some people. And why are the gods silent when hideous violence is committed by mad people in their name. But perhaps that's just me.

Before Christianity, which is followed by 2.1 billion people and Islam (1.3 billion), there was Hinduism (900 million) and Buddhism (376 million). And before these religions, which are still practised, there was Paganism.

The Irish version of paganism was particularly imaginative and interesting with beliefs in fairies like the Leprechaun and the Banshee. The leprechaun makes an appearance in the medieval tale known as the Echtra Fergus mac Léti (Adventure of Fergus son of Léti); but their origin can probably be traced back to 8th-century tales of water spirits, which were known as ‘luchorpán’. A banshee, on the other hand, is a female spirit in Irish mythology, who predicts the death of a family member, usually by shrieking or keening. The origin of the banshee may be traced to the keening mourning women at funerals, who accepted alcohol as payment for their services and were later condemned by the church.

Banshee by Michael1010

There were lots of other fairies like the headless dullahan, a black-robed horseman, who carries his head on his saddle. He can see at great distances, even at night, but if you see him, you will be rewarded with a bowl of blood thrown in your eyes or even blindness.

The pooka is a fearsome fairy who can take many frightening forms. It roams about the county at night and the sight of it can stop the hens from laying and the cows from giving milk. If you happen to be in county Wexford and you look up and see a huge eagle, run, as it might just be a pooka. The pooka may derive from the horse cults of early Celtic times.

As an avid reader of fairy tales in my childhood, I can recall the frightening concept of the changeling, which may be a stunted and often deformed baby born to the fairy folk. These fairy folk, however, prefer a perfect human child, and so, perform a swap-see. It gets worse though, because changelings can also be demented old fairies disguised as children, or, objects such as pieces of wood which take on the appearance of a child through magic. The changeling idea may have provided an explanation for a child born who was mentally or physically impaired, in some way.

There are other fairies of course, but you may seek them out for yourself.


Books To Read


Beasts of the Frozen Sun (Frozen Sun Saga #1) by Jill Criswell - inspired in Celtic and Viking mythology.

When Only a Few Thousand Humans Lived on Earth

Between 50,000 and 100,000 years ago, there occurred a very sharp decrease in the human population, so that only 3,000–10,000 individuals lived on Earth. Evidence of this very small human population is supported by genetic evidence.

Humans came very close to extinction at this time, because only about 1000 of these individual humans were capable of producing offspring. Humankind struggled to survive for thousands of years, until some time during the Stone Age.

You may have heard the theory about how climate change caused by a volcano helped to bring about the near extinction of dinosaurs (chickens still exist), well, around 70,000 B.C., a volcano called Toba, on Sumatra, in Indonesia, almost wiped out humanity.

As the largest volcanic eruption ever known, Toba poured so much ash, dust and vapour into the air that ash covered the ground and the sun's light was dimmed for about six years. Food became scarce and the Earth became cold and vegetation was wiped out.

Humanity recovered. In 1750 there were 700 million people on the planet and in 1804, the human population reached one billion individuals. Currently, human population appears to be out of control with in excess of 7.5 billion people sharing this planet.

With humanity threatening to overcome the carrying capacity of Earth, we face a future of climate change and possibly wars over diminishing and scarce resources. And yet, the subject of human population is rarely mentioned.

Books To Read

The Crack in Space is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. On a future Earth (c. 2080 CE) overwhelmed with severe difficulties related to overpopulation.