Monday, May 22, 2006

Manx-Americans on Postage Stamps

Tomorrow, 2006-05-23, the Isle of Man Post Office will issue a set of six commemorative stamps celebrating Manx links with Washington, D.C.

  • Joseph Gurney Cannon, Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1903 to 1911, was a son of Manx immigrants. His portrait appeared on the cover of the first issue of TIME Magazine on the day he retired from political office, 1923-03-03.
  • Journalist Mary Clemmer, daughter of a Manx mother, who coined the term "First Lady."
  • Letitia Christian Tyler, wife of President John Tyler.
  • Matthew Stanley Quay, political boss in 19th-century Pennsylvania.
  • Henry Watterson, journalist and politician, Liberal Republican (before that became a contradiction in terms) turned Democrat, helped convince Theodore Roosevelt not to seek a third term as President.
  • Ewan Clague, who led a team of number-crunchers who fleshed out the details of the Marshall Plan after World War II.
The denominations of the stamps range from £0.28 to £0.83. The Isle of Man pound is fixed at 1:1 with the U.K. pound sterling.

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