What Connects These Three?
Mercury — Venus — Mars
planets with no natural moons
Once practically synonymous with mobile email, this smartphone brand was famous for its tiny physical keyboard and secure messaging before touchscreen phones overtook it.
BlackBerry
Released in 1982, this song became famous for a groundbreaking music video featuring dancing zombies and a horror-film-style transformation.
Thriller
This tiny eight-legged animal can survive extreme cold, radiation, dehydration, and even direct exposure to the vacuum of space for a limited time.
tardigrade
This terrorist takes over a Los Angeles skyscraper on Christmas Eve while pretending his operation is politically motivated.
Die Hard? (Villain: Hans Gruber)
Jimi Hendrix — Janis Joplin — Jim Morrison
famous musicians who died at age 27
Introduced by Sony in 1975, this videotape format famously lost the home-video format war to VHS despite developing a reputation for excellent picture quality.
Betamax
This 1981 rock anthem centers on a small-town girl and a city boy, and decades later its popularity surged again after being used in the final scene of The Sopranos.
Don’t Stop Believin
When threatened, this small amphibian can deliberately break its own toe bones and force the sharp ends through its skin to create temporary claws.
hairy frog? (Also called the horror frog.)
This former Jedi wears black armor, serves an Emperor, and reveals one of cinema's most famous family relationships.
The Empire Strikes Back? (Villain: Darth Vader)
Java — Python — Ruby
programming languages named after something other than computing concepts
Long before Google dominated search, this search engine launched in 1995 and became famous for its simple homepage and multicolored mountain logo
AltaVista
Released in 1991, this grunge breakthrough became an unexpected generational anthem, while its chaotic high-school-gym music video featured cheerleaders wearing an anarchist symbol.
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Under certain conditions, sufficiently hot water can freeze faster than colder water—a counterintuitive phenomenon named after a Tanzanian student who investigated it.
Mpemba effect
This psychopathic killer uses a captive bolt pistol, flips a coin to determine some victims' fates, and relentlessly pursues a stolen case containing $2 million.
No Country for Old Men? (Villain: Anton Chigurh)
Titanic — Britannic — Olympic
three Olympic-class ocean liners built for the White Star Line
Introduced in 1992, this Apple personal digital assistant featured handwriting recognition technology called Rosetta and helped popularize the term “PDA.”
Apple Newton? (Accept: Newton MessagePad.)
This 1977 rock epic runs more than six minutes, ends with an extended guitar solo, and takes its name from a fictional establishment that its creators repeatedly explained wasn't an actual place.
Hotel California
In quantum mechanics, a particle can sometimes cross an energy barrier that classical physics says it doesn't have enough energy to overcome.
quantum tunneling
This villain presents himself as an unassuming, physically impaired Hungarian criminal while telling investigators an elaborate story about the almost mythical crime lord Keyser Söze.
The Usual Suspects? (Villain: Verbal Kint/Keyser Söze)
Mercury — Gemini — Apollo
NASA’s three major crewed spaceflight programs preceding the Space Shuttle era
Launched in 1981, this early portable computer weighed about 24 pounds, had a 5-inch display, two floppy drives, and is often cited as the first commercially successful portable computer.
Osborne 1
Released in 1985, this synth-driven song became a U.S. No. 1 hit after an innovative video blended live-action footage with pencil-sketch animation.
Take On Me
When certain liquids are cooled below their transition temperature, they can flow with essentially zero viscosity and even appear to creep up and over the walls of their container.
superfluidity
This soft-spoken antagonist is a former Texas Ranger captain who becomes obsessed with finding a fortune in gold, pursuing the protagonists across Mexico while dressed almost entirely in black.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre? (Villain: James Cody)