Venetia Burney, The Girl Who Named Pluto

Do you know where Pluto got its name? I didn't know until I stumbled on this quite by accident.Venetia Burney was born July 11, 1918. On March 14, 1930, when she was only 11 years old, Venetia's grandfather had just read an article in The Times about the discovery of a new planet. Venetia recalled some years later what transpired over breakfast that day."It was about 8 o’clock and I was having breakfast with my mother and my grandfather, and my grandfather as usual opened the paper, the Times, and in it he read that a new planet had been discovered. He wondered what it should be called. We all wondered. And then I said, “Why not call it Pluto”. And the whole thing stemmed from that.and he shared the story with his granddaughter."Her grandfather forwarded the suggestion to astronomer Herbert Hall Turner, who cabled his American colleagues at Lowell Observatory. Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of the new planet, liked the name because it started with the initials of Percival Lowell who had initiated the search for Pluto. On May 1, 1930, the name Pluto was formally adopted.An interesting side note to this story is that her grandfather's brother, Henry ...