Links between apparently unrelated phenomena constantly surprise us. Take, for example, three famous men named Holmes.

No one would confuse Sherlock Holmes with either Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. or his son, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. The first was, of course, the great fictitious English detective created by Arthur Conan Doyle. The second was a leading 19th century New England doctor/author/poet. And the third, the doctor’s son, was our famous legal thinker and jurist.