"Names make news." Last week the following names made the following news:

Pluto was the name announced by Roger Lowell Putnam, spokesman for Lowell observatory (Flagstaff, Ariz.) as having been chosen for the New Planet discovered from there this year (TIME. March 24). "We felt . . . that the line of Roman gods for whom the other planets are named should not be broken," explained Mr. Putnam.

God Pluto was unlucky. Drawing lots with his brothers Jupiter and Neptune (Saturn was their father, Rhea their mother) for the kingdoms of heaven, sea and the infernal regions, Pluto got Hades. Previously named for Pluto: a purgative water, a species of monkey.

Venerable Thera P. Vajiranana of Ceylon, robed in gorgeous Buddhist vestments of yellow and gold, addressed the New York Junior League. Said he: "I urge that the negligibility of material things be universally recognized."

Mary Lewis, one of the few comely operatic sopranos, said she had refused to appear in a Paris film production, La Belle Helene, because the management stipulated that she wear a transparent Grecian gown.

Count Ernesto Rossi of Martini & Rossi (makers of Vermouth, contributors to fine cocktails), arrived in Manhattan last week on business. Said he: "Americans as a class are not drinking people, although the cocktail habit seems to be regarded as a more or less desirable social amenity. . . . Americans [in Europe, where he has seen them] are divided into two classes: the Drys and the Dry Martinians." Asked by a reporter if he favored Prohibition, said he: "But for Italy--No. . . . We Italians are not blessed with the great sense of humor the Americans possess."

Mrs. Mamie McConnell Borah, wife of Senator William Edgar Borah of Idaho, returning from Europe, told newshawks that her husband had cabled her to give no interviews because he "was indignant'' at the stories which newspapers carried when Mrs. Borah neglected to provide herself with a French visa on leaving the U. S. (TIME, April 21).

She admitted, however, having had "a ten-minute visit with Mrs. Dawes [wife of the U. S. Ambassador to Great Britain] over the telephone." On the pier, Mrs. Borah did not exercise any courtesy-of-the-port order.

Charles A. Levine, rich Long Island scrap-metal man, "first trans-Atlantic airplane passenger," and Mabel Boll, bejeweled publicite who once contemplated flying from France to the U. S., arrived together in Paris. Said he, when asked if he planned to divorce his wife and marry Miss Boll: "The whole thing is utterly absurd. We just came over to spend a little vacation at Carlsbad. There is nothing unusual in the fact that Mabel is in town. We are good friends, you know."

Interviewed on his 71st birthday. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, spiritualist, detective-story writer, testily told newshawks that Sherlock Holmes, his most famed character, was "definitely dead." "I've done with him," he said. "To tell the truth, I'm rather tired of hearing myself described as the author of Sherlock Holmes. One would think that I had written nothing but detective stories."* Asked if there was a prototype for his celebrated sleuth, said he: "Most certainly there was. He was an Edinburgh doctor under whom I studied. He had an uncanny gift of drawing large inferences from small observations. When I tried to draw a detective, naturally I thought of Dr. Bell and his methods. . . . Watson was just an average man--not really stupid, simply average."

Adolph Fassnacht, "Christus" in the Freiburg Passion Play now touring the U. S. under the direction of impresario Morris Gest, sued his brother George, the play's Judas, for $100,000 for starting the Freiburg Passion Play in English. Recently in Denver "Christus" and his wife "Mary Magdalene" attacked "Judas," pushed his head through a box office window. All three were taken to jail.

Carl Van Doren, Burton Rascoe, Julia Peterkin and Joseph Wood Krutch were the names signed to a letter (reported last week in the New Yorker) from the Literary Guild of America to the wardroom of the U. S. S. Warden. The letter was addressed "Mr. Wardroom Mess." The salutation: "Dear Mr. Mess."

* Other Doyle works: The Great Boer War; The Coming of the Fairies; History of Spiritualism.

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