What do you think of this fact?
A new planet needs a name. You’d picture committees, long meetings, maybe a few Latin experts. With Pluto, it went differently: a schoolgirl came up with the name between toast and tea.
A planet in the morning paper
In March 1930, Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, announced a new world far out beyond Neptune. It had been found by Clyde Tombaugh, a 23-year-old who had spent almost a year searching for it.
On the morning of March 14, 1930, in Oxford, 11-year-old Venetia Burney was having breakfast. Her grandfather Falconer Madan, formerly head of the famous Bodleian Library, was reading the newspaper to her. According to SBS News, Venetia asked: “Why not call it Pluto?” Pluto is the Roman god of the underworld, a fitting name for a cold, dark world at the edge of the solar system. Pretty clever for someone who just wanted to eat breakfast in peace.
From the breakfast table to Arizona
Her grandfather liked the idea and passed it on to a friend: according to Space.com, Herbert Hall Turner, an astronomy professor at Oxford. Turner sent a telegram to Flagstaff. The scientists there voted, and Pluto won unanimously. On May 24, 1930, the new world officially got its name.
One detail made the suggestion especially strong: its first two letters, PL, are the initials of Percival Lowell, the observatory’s founder.
And Venetia’s reward? According to a BBC interview quoted by SBS News, her grandfather gave her a five-pound note.
Bonus fact: A dust-measuring instrument on the New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto, is named after Venetia.
Some people make history with equations. Venetia needed one question at breakfast.