To Urey's credit, the young Mr Miller did not suffer the common fate of graduate students relegation to the sidelines when the master's hypothesis is proved right.

ECONOMIST: Stanley Miller

That will still leave a larger question: how common is Sgr's fate?

ECONOMIST: The galactic gourmand

Merck, Lilly and Pfizer's common thread: They all blamed their fate (good or bad) on single drugs.

FORBES: Magazine Article

The same fate awaits most of the other common artefacts of the sort that are sometimes found on Internet-auction sites.

ECONOMIST: America's Jewish lobby

Social media has made it more common than ever to interact with people you've never met, but what about putting your romantic fate in the hands of an airline?

CNN: 4 ways to share the love on Valentine's Day

If you add the mystery of Clapham Common to the legacy of back-to-basics, you begin to think that the government is tempting fate by sticking to its plans to publish a consultative paper on the family next week.

ECONOMIST: Public lives, private morals