50 Fun Facts About Common Bond

What do bananas, tomatoes and grapes have in common that strawberries and raspberries lack?

Botanical berries are fleshy fruits produced from a single flower with one ovary, so cucumbers and aubergines qualify too. Strawberries, despite the name, are accessory fruits.

What do the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup have in common, far from any blacksmith's forge?

Bones in the ear, known in Latin as the malleus, incus and stapes, pass sound vibrations on from the eardrum. The stirrup is the smallest and lightest bone in the human body.

What do July and August have in common, having once been called Quintilis and Sextilis?

Named after Roman leaders, the months honour Julius Caesar and Augustus. The Senate renamed Quintilis in 44 BC, the month of Caesar's birth, and Sextilis followed in 8 BC.

What do the sandwich, the cardigan and the wellington boot have in common in their naming stories?

British aristocrats gave all three their names: the 4th Earl of Sandwich, the 7th Earl of Cardigan and the 1st Duke of Wellington, who had his shoemaker modify the Hessian boot.

What do the everyday words scuba, laser and radar have in common in the way each was coined?

They began as acronyms: laser stands for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. Once the words behind an acronym fade from memory, it may be termed an anacronym.

What do the platypus and the echidna have in common that no other living mammal shares?

They lay eggs rather than bearing live young, yet the females still nurse their hatchlings with milk. The platypus and four kinds of echidna are the only monotremes alive today.

What do Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello have in common, besides naming Italian Renaissance artists?

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles creators Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird considered Japanese names before settling on Renaissance artists. Michelangelo, the fourth turtle, completes the set.

What do a birdie, an eagle and an albatross have in common, apart from the obvious feathers?

Golf scores under par go by those names, for one, two and three strokes better on a single hole. The albatross, named for one of the largest birds, is also called a double eagle in the US.

What do Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune have in common that went undiscovered until the space age?

A system of rings circles all four giant planets, but Saturn's is the biggest and most visible. Uranus's went unnoticed until 1977, and Jupiter's until Voyager 1 flew past in 1979.

What do broccoli, kale and Brussels sprouts have in common, despite looking nothing alike?

They are one species, Brassica oleracea, bred into cultivars so different that some are hardly recognisable as relatives. Cabbage, cauliflower and collards belong to it too.

What do Mercury, Gemini and Apollo have in common in the history of the 1960s?

NASA crewed space programs carried those names in turn during the 1960s. Gemini, Latin for twins, suited a capsule built for two astronauts, between one-man Mercury and three-man Apollo.

What do Foxtrot, Tango and Whiskey have in common, though only two of them are dances?

NATO phonetic alphabet words stand for F, T and W when letters are spelled aloud by radio. Alfa and Juliett are deliberately misspelled so that speakers of other languages pronounce them correctly.

What do rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison have in common, beyond 1960s fame?

They died aged 27 within a single year, across 1970 and 1971. The idea of a '27 Club' only took hold after Kurt Cobain died at the same age in 1994.

What do Vatican City, San Marino and Lesotho have in common that no other sovereign state shares?

Wholly enclosed by one neighbour, each is a sovereign enclave: Italy surrounds Vatican City and San Marino, while South Africa surrounds Lesotho, the largest of the three.

What do peanuts, peas and lentils have in common, even though one is usually sold as a nut?

Legumes carry their seeds in pods, and the peanut ripens its pods underground, earning the other name groundnut. Like its relatives, it hosts bacteria in its roots that fix nitrogen.

What do spiders, scorpions and ticks have in common that sets them apart from true insects?

Arachnids have eight legs as adults where insects have six, and they lack antennae and wings. Mites, harvestmen and camel spiders belong to the group too.

Which word do Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia officially use in place of 'state'?

Commonwealth appears in the full official names of all four, yet the label is merely stylistic and carries no legal or political significance.

What do neon, argon and krypton have in common, in the far-right column of the periodic table?

Noble gases are colourless, odourless and so unreactive that argon is pumped into incandescent light bulbs to stop the hot filament from oxidising.

What do presidents Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy have in common with Abraham Lincoln?

They were assassinated in office, though Garfield lingered for weeks while his doctors' hunt for the bullet likely aggravated his wounds and introduced infection.

What do Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves and Catherine Parr have in common in Tudor history?

Wives of Henry VIII are remembered by the rhyme 'Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived'. Catherine Parr is the rhyme's survivor, yet Anne of Cleves outlived them all, dying in 1557.

What do Blinky, Pinky and Inky have in common with their orange companion Clyde?

Ghosts in Pac-Man each hunt differently: Blinky gives direct chase, Pinky and Inky try to get in front, and Clyde switches between chasing and fleeing. In Japan the game was first titled Puck Man.

What do Colonel Mustard, Miss Scarlett and Professor Plum have in common around a murder scene?

Suspects in Clue (Cluedo) number six in the standard edition, and Miss Scarlett traditionally moved first. Anthony Pratt, a Birmingham musician, devised the game in 1943 during wartime air raids.

What do a full house, a flush and a straight have in common at a card table?

Poker hands rank in exactly that order, a full house beating a flush and a flush beating a straight. Put the last two together and the straight flush outranks all three.

What do the Niña, the Pinta and the Santa María have in common in the story of 1492?

Columbus's ships were modest merchant vessels, and one never came home: the Santa María ran aground on Christmas Day 1492, and its timbers went into a fort named La Navidad.

What do Gold, Juno and Sword have in common with Utah and Omaha in the history of 1944?

D-Day landing beaches carried those code names along an 80-kilometre stretch of Normandy coast. Troops from Britain took Gold and Sword, Canadians landed at Juno, and Americans at the other two.

What do Goldfinger, Moonraker and Diamonds Are Forever have in common, beyond Shirley Bassey themes?

James Bond films gave Shirley Bassey three of her best-known recordings, because the series brought her back twice after Goldfinger. Roger Moore starred in Moonraker, Sean Connery in the other two.

Which museum do the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace share?

The Louvre has shown the Winged Victory at the top of its main staircase since 1884. The Mona Lisa owes part of its fame to being stolen from the building in 1911 by a former worker, Vincenzo Peruggia.

What fate do Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae have in common from the year 79 AD?

Buried by Mount Vesuvius, the three towns lay under metres of ash and pumice. Pliny the Elder, admiral of the nearby fleet, died trying to rescue people stranded by the eruption.

What do Carrie, The Shining and Misery have in common, on the page before the cinema screen?

Novels by Stephen King began with Carrie, his 1974 debut, which survived only because his wife Tabitha rescued the first pages from the trash and persuaded him to keep writing.

What do Fagin, Ebenezer Scrooge and Miss Havisham have in common as figures of Victorian fiction?

Charles Dickens characters have a way of outliving their books: Scrooge's surname has entered the English language as a byword for greed and misanthropy.

What do the watt, the volt and the ampere have in common, beyond turning up on appliance labels?

Named after scientists, the units honour James Watt, Alessandro Volta and André-Marie Ampère. By convention, symbols for units named after people take a capital letter: W, V and A.

What do Richter, Beaufort and Mohs have in common, linking earthquakes, wind and mineral hardness?

Scales bear their names: Richter's rates earthquakes, Mohs's ranks the hardness of minerals, and Beaufort, a Royal Navy hydrographer, devised his for wind in 1805.

What do brass, bronze and steel have in common that copper, tin and iron do not?

They are alloys, metals blended with other elements: bronze mixes copper with tin, brass swaps the tin for zinc, and steel is iron with a little carbon.

What do scurvy, rickets and beriberi have in common in their underlying cause?

A missing vitamin lies behind each one: C for scurvy, D for rickets and B1 for beriberi. James Lind found in 1747 that citrus prevented scurvy, long before anyone had identified a vitamin.

What do orangutans, gorillas and bonobos have in common that baboons and macaques do not?

They are great apes, the tailless primate family that also includes chimpanzees and humans. The bonobo is the smallest of them, while male eastern gorillas can weigh 180 kilograms.

What do Pluto, Eris and Ceres have in common under the definition astronomers adopted in 2006?

Dwarf planets became a category in 2006, when Pluto lost the full planetary status it had held for decades. Ceres is the only confirmed one inside the asteroid belt.

What do the Sahara and Antarctica have in common, despite their opposite temperatures?

Both are deserts, because the label depends on scant precipitation, not heat. Antarctica is a polar desert and the largest of all, leaving the Sahara as the biggest hot one.

Which river do Vienna, Budapest and Belgrade have in common on the way to the Black Sea?

The Danube passes through four national capitals in all, since Bratislava sits between Vienna and Budapest, before it empties through a delta in Romania and Ukraine.

What do the mojito, the daiquiri and the piña colada have in common behind the bar?

They are made with rum, the liquor distilled from sugarcane. The daiquiri borrows its name from an iron-mining spot near Santiago de Cuba, where an American engineer is credited with inventing it.

What do adagio, allegro and presto have in common on a page of sheet music?

Tempo markings tell players how fast to go, from slow adagio to very fast presto. They are written in Italian because it was the language of most composers when the terms caught on.

What do mercury and bromine have in common that sets them apart from every other chemical element?

Liquid at room temperature, they are the only two elements in that state under standard conditions. Mercury is a silvery metal, while bromine is a volatile red-brown halogen that evaporates readily.

What do Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan have in common that no other nation on Earth shares?

They are doubly landlocked, meaning every state on their borders is itself cut off from the sea. A traveller from either one must cross at least two borders to reach an ocean coast.

What do the elements yttrium, terbium, erbium and ytterbium have in common in their naming?

Named after a Swedish village, Ytterby, the four make it the richest single source of elemental discoveries in the world. Holmium, scandium and three more were first found there too.

What do Guyana and Suriname have in common on the road, unlike every other South American country?

They drive on the left, so the Takutu River Bridge between Guyana and Brazil is the only border crossing in the Americas where traffic has to swap sides.

What do Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and the Thin White Duke have in common in 1970s rock?

David Bowie personas came and went quickly: he retired Ziggy Stardust on stage at London's Hammersmith Odeon in 1973, and Aladdin Sane's name was a pun on 'A Lad Insane'.

What do rubies and sapphires have in common beneath their different colours?

The mineral corundum forms both gems: chromium turns it into red ruby, and every other colour of the same crystal is sold as sapphire.

What do Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos have in common in Greek myth, as sisters who work with thread?

The three Fates set the span of each mortal life: in the usual telling Clotho spun the thread, Lachesis measured it with her rod and Atropos cut it.

What do the bright stars Betelgeuse, Rigel and Bellatrix have in common on a star chart?

The constellation Orion places those three, with Saiph, at the corners of a rough rectangle. The three stars of the hunter's Belt sit in a short straight line at its centre.

What do the oboe, the bassoon and the cor anglais have in common in how they make sound?

A double reed, two thin blades of cane bound together, vibrates to give all three their voice. The cor anglais is the alto of the oboe family, known in North America as the English horn.

What rare Nobel distinction do Marie Curie and Linus Pauling have in common?

Prizes in two separate fields went to both: Curie for physics and chemistry, Pauling for chemistry and peace. Pauling won each of his alone, without sharing either.