Why did they name the Milky Way after a chocolate bar?
They didn’t. The Milky Way Galaxy was named long before the candy bar was invented. “Our galaxy’s name – the Milky Way – is a translation from the Latin “Via Lactea” which is derived from the Greek word “Kiklios Galaxios” which means milky circle. If you go to a dark sky location, the plane of the Milky Way appears as a swath of light across the night sky. There is a Greek myth for the origin of the Milky Way. That is that the baby Heracles is brought by Zeus to Hera to drink her milk so he could become immortal and the Milky Way is nothing more than spilt milk.” The candy bar wasn’t named for the galaxy either. “Created in 1923 in the kitchen of Frank Mars, the original MILKY WAY(R) bar — a now comforting combination of milk chocolate, nougat and caramel — sold for a nickel and was an overnight success for Mars. Designed to replicate the taste of malted milk shakes, which were the rage of the roaring ’20s, MILKY WAY(R) was named after a famed malted milk drink of the day — not the
