Yesterday was a white-dwarf day. First, I read a poem by Ja'net Danielo that begins with one: "All last year, I waited for a white dwarf". Later, I read a passage from James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake" that mentions one: "The giant sun is in his emanence but which is chief of those white dwarfees of which he ever is surabanded?" (494.27-28). All this made me wonder when "white dwarves" were first identified or named. While the star Eridani B was discovered by William Herschel in 1793, only in 1910 did a team of astronomers first notice that it was unusually white. "White dwarf" was then coined in 1922 by William Luyten. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 13 January 2026)