50 Fun Facts About What Do They Have in Common?

What do Mars, Milky Way and Galaxy have in common on a sweet shop shelf, far from any telescope?

Chocolate bars carry all three names, and each is made by Mars Inc., whose founder Frank Mars launched the Milky Way in Minneapolis in 1923.

What do Python, Java and Ruby have in common in computing, besides a snake, an island and a gemstone?

Programming languages share all three names, and Python honours the British comedy troupe Monty Python rather than the reptile.

What do Mustang, Bronco and Pinto have in common on American roads, besides all being words for horses?

Ford models wore all three names, and the Mustang sold so well that sporty rivals built in its image became known as pony cars.

What do John Adams and Thomas Jefferson have in common on 4 July 1826, fifty years after American independence?

Both died that day, Jefferson at Monticello a few hours before Adams, whose last words claimed that his old rival still lived.

What do Alexander Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin have in common, despite both appearing on United States banknotes?

Neither was president: Hamilton was the first Treasury Secretary and Franklin a diplomat and inventor, yet they front the $10 and $100 bills.

What do giraffes, humans and mice have in common just below the skull, despite the obvious difference in length?

Seven neck bones is the rule for nearly every mammal, so a giraffe's neck is long because each bone is stretched, not because there are more of them.

What do the words racecar, level and kayak have in common with the names Hannah and Otto?

Palindromes read the same backwards as forwards, and the trick stretches to whole sentences and even to dates such as 22/02/2022.

What do tomatoes, potatoes and chili peppers have in common, despite starring in Italian, Irish and Indian cooking?

Native to the Americas, all three reached the rest of the world only after 1492, and Portuguese traders carried chili peppers on to India.

What do bats, dolphins and sperm whales have in common when hunting in darkness or murky water?

They use echolocation, calling out and reading the returning echoes, a sense that was not properly described in toothed whales until 1956.

What do Mark Twain, George Orwell and Lewis Carroll have in common on the covers of their famous books?

They are pen names: Samuel Clemens took Mark Twain from a riverboat cry meaning two fathoms deep, which was safe water for a steamboat.

What do Boardwalk, Park Place and Marvin Gardens have in common, besides echoing real places around Atlantic City?

Spaces in Monopoly borrowed these names from New Jersey, and Marvin Gardens misspells the real Marven Gardens, an error Parker Brothers admitted in 1995.

What do Dasher, Vixen and Cupid have in common in a Christmas poem first published in 1823?

Santa's reindeer were first named in that poem, where the last two were called Dunder and Blixem, from a Dutch oath meaning thunder and lightning.

What do Scar, Jafar and Ursula have in common in Disney animated films released between 1989 and 1994?

The villains of The Lion King, Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, they include Scar, who was loosely based on King Claudius in Hamlet.

What do Tatooine, Hoth and Alderaan have in common in a film saga that began in 1977?

Planets in Star Wars run from desert Tatooine to icy Hoth, and Tatooine's rocky canyon scenes were shot in Tunisia and in Death Valley.

What do Merry, Pippin and Bilbo have in common in the Middle-earth stories of J. R. R. Tolkien?

They are hobbits, a people Tolkien described as between two and four feet tall, with feet covered in brown hairy fur.

What do actors Michael Keaton, Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson have in common in superhero cinema?

Each played Batman: Keaton for director Tim Burton, Bale across a trilogy that began in 2005, and Pattinson in a 2022 reboot.

What do the blockbusters Jaws, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Jurassic Park have in common behind the camera?

Directed by Steven Spielberg, the three span 18 years, and Jurassic Park became the highest-grossing film of its time.

What do the animated features Toy Story, Up and Coco have in common in their studio of origin?

Pixar made them, and its Toy Story of 1995 was the first feature film animated entirely by computer.

What do Athos, Porthos and Aramis have in common in a French adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas?

They are musketeers, the three of the novel's title, yet the hero of the story is d'Artagnan, a young outsider who hopes to join their corps.

What do the foil, the épée and the sabre have in common, each with its own blade and rules?

Weapons in fencing differ in more than shape, and the sabre is the only one of the three to feature at every Summer Olympics.

What do the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes have in common for three-year-old racehorses?

The Triple Crown is so hard to sweep that the record times Secretariat set in all three races in 1973 stood for more than 50 years.

What do Monza, Silverstone and Monaco have in common on a world championship calendar dating from 1950?

Formula One circuits come and go, but all three staged races in the first championship season of 1950, which opened at Silverstone.

What do Uruguay, England and France have in common in the history of the men's football World Cup?

Won it as hosts in 1930, 1966 and 1998, they share the feat with Italy, West Germany and Argentina, who also lifted the trophy on home soil.

What do Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis and Usain Bolt have in common at Olympic Games held decades apart?

Each won the 100 metres, then added the 200 metres and a sprint relay gold at the same Games, a treble Owens first managed in 1936.

What do the Tour de France, the Giro d'Italia and the Vuelta a España have in common in road cycling?

The three Grand Tours are cycling's great stage races, and the French one, first held in 1903, is the oldest by six years.

What do the capital cities Canberra, Brasília and Washington, D.C. have in common in how they came into being?

Planned from scratch as capitals, they include Canberra, which was designed by the American architect Walter Burley Griffin.

What do Russia, Turkey and Kazakhstan have in common on a map of the world?

Land in Europe and Asia can be lopsided: Turkey's European side, Eastern Thrace, covers about 3% of its area yet holds more than a tenth of its people.

What do Niagara, Victoria and Angel have in common on maps of North America, Africa and Venezuela?

They are waterfalls, and Angel Falls is the world's tallest uninterrupted one, with a height of 979 metres.

What do Mount Fuji, Mount Etna and Mount Kilimanjaro have in common beneath their famous summits?

They are volcanoes: Fuji and Etna are active, while Kilimanjaro, the highest volcano in the Eastern Hemisphere, is dormant.

What do Marie Curie, Frédéric Chopin and Nicolaus Copernicus have in common in their place of birth?

Born in modern Poland: Curie in Warsaw, Chopin in a village to its west, and Copernicus centuries earlier in the city of Toruń.

What do Osiris, Anubis and Horus have in common in the story of ancient Egypt?

Egyptian gods often took animal form, so Horus appears as a falcon and Anubis, protector of graves, as a jackal or a man with a canine head.

What do Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood have in common beyond their Hollywood film careers?

Each held elected office in California: Reagan and Schwarzenegger as governor, and Eastwood for two years as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea.

What do Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins have in common during eight days in July 1969?

The crew of Apollo 11 did not all reach the lunar surface: Collins stayed alone in orbit aboard the command module while the others landed.

What do Columbia, Discovery and Atlantis have in common in NASA's history between 1981 and 2011?

Space Shuttle orbiters were named after historic sailing ships, except the test craft Enterprise, which took its name from the Star Trek starship.

What do Mercury and Venus have in common that sets them apart from every other planet orbiting the Sun?

No moons orbit either world, whereas Earth has one and even small Mars has two, named Phobos and Deimos.

What do diamond, graphite and charcoal have in common, although one is among the hardest materials known?

Made of carbon, they differ in how the atoms are arranged, and at everyday pressures graphite is actually more stable than diamond.

What do octopuses, lobsters and horseshoe crabs have in common in the fluid that carries their oxygen?

Blue blood comes from hemocyanin, a copper-based protein that does the oxygen-carrying job iron-based hemoglobin does in humans.

What do llamas, alpacas and vicuñas have in common in the way zoologists classify mammals?

The camel family has a South American branch, whose llamas, alpacas, vicuñas and guanacos are humpless cousins of the dromedary.

What do apples, pears and strawberries have in common in the way botanists classify their plants?

The rose family also gives us cherries, peaches, plums and almonds, which makes it one of the six most economically important crop families.

What do the English words shampoo, loot and thug have in common in the language they came from?

Borrowed from Hindi, they include shampoo, which comes from a verb meaning to press or knead, as a masseur would.

What do Costa Rica, Panama and Iceland have in common in the way each country handles national defence?

No standing army exists in any of them: Costa Rica abolished its forces in 1949, and Iceland keeps only a lightly armed coast guard.

What do Texas, Vermont and Hawaii have in common in their history before joining the United States?

Once independent republics, they governed themselves for years: Vermont from 1777 to 1791 and Texas from 1836 to 1846.

What do Alexander Fleming, Alexander Graham Bell and TV pioneer John Logie Baird have in common in their origins?

Scottish by birth, they include Bell, who was born in Edinburgh, and Baird, who demonstrated the first mechanical television system in 1926.

What do Morocco, Lesotho and Eswatini have in common that no other sovereign African country shares?

Ruled by a monarch, the three differ in kind: Lesotho and Morocco have constitutional kings, while Eswatini's king holds absolute power.

What do emeralds and aquamarines have in common beneath their green and blue colours?

The mineral beryl is colourless when pure, and traces of impurities tint it green for emerald or blue for aquamarine.

What do the chemical symbols for gold, lead and tin have in common, given as Au, Pb and Sn?

They come from Latin names, aurum, plumbum and stannum, the last of which originally meant an alloy of silver and lead.

What do lithium, sodium and potassium have in common in the first column of the periodic table?

Alkali metals all react with water, and the heavier members of the group react more vigorously than the lighter ones.

What do the Rosetta Stone, the Sutton Hoo treasure and the Mesopotamian treasure of Ur have in common in London?

The British Museum received the Rosetta Stone from King George III in 1802 and the Sutton Hoo grave goods as a gift from landowner Edith Pretty.

What do Halley, Hale–Bopp and Hyakutake have in common, each having been visible to the naked eye from Earth?

Famous comets all, and the huge nucleus of Hale–Bopp kept it visible to the naked eye for a record 18 months.

What do insulin, adrenaline and cortisol have in common, though only the first is made in the pancreas?

Hormones carry signals around the body, and adrenaline was the first to be purified, from the adrenal glands of sheep and oxen in 1901.