From Jay Pasachoff, Williams College
Just when we astronomers have been stressing that nobody alive had seen a transit of Venus until the one on 8 June this year, since the previous one was in 1882 and the oldest person on Earth is 115 years old, along comes Harriet (11 September, p 38). Though she is a tortoise, I’m delighted to learn that 173-year-old Harriet, from her perch in the Galapagos, may well have seen the transit of Venus of 1882 and even of 1874.
Williamstown, Massachusetts, US
