Omnipelagos

We've all heard of seven degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. Any person in the world cab co connected to Kevin Bacon by seven links or less.

How about THREE degrees of separation from, say, Liberace to Alice Cooper?

Today's FamilyFirst site can do just that. Or for that matter, it can find associations between anything and anything!

It's called Omnipelagos. Here's what they have to say about themselves:

Omnipelagos.com searches for chains of relationships between any two arbitrary concepts. Each chain is displayed along with a short text fragment which provides context. It can be used for fact-finding, brainstorming, or just plain fun. To search, just enter two different people, places, things, events, or concepts in the input boxes at the top of the page, and click the Search button. After a second or two, the server will display chains of relationships between the two concepts.

The database they use has over 500,000 entries, and is periodically synced with Wikipedia. And the connections it comes up with are pretty amazing.

For instance, Liberace appeared on The Muppet Show. So did Alice Cooper. Three degrees.

Mickey Mantle and Yugoslavia? Mantle was reinstated to baseball by Peter Ueberroth. Ueberroth organized the 1984 Summer Olympics. Yugoslavia won medals there. Four Degrees.

So use your imagination and have fun. Wow, four degrees of separation between Arkansas and Saddam Hussein!

http://www.omnipelagos.com

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