Chief Askew's Diary: March 13, 1930

DOJ's special agent arrives from Atlanta; the 'ninth planet' is discovered

The special agent from the Department of Justice’s office in Atlanta arrived this morning to investigate the stolen Hudson car from Alabama that was wrecked in Newnan by a young Black man Tuesday night. The car’s owner also arrived “and has decided to have the car fixed or made over as it was practically torn up in the wreck,” Chief Askew wrote in his diary.

I don’t know if it made much of an impression on the residents of Newnan at the time, but an announcement from the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona would affect school children for the next 76 years as they assembled models of the solar system out of foam balls, wire coat hangers, and modeling clay. Paid subscribers can read on about the discovery of the planet Pluto.

The high-resolution color photo of Pluto taken in 2015 by New Horizons is from the collection of NASA/Johns Hopkins University, accessed via Wikipedia.