There is a nice result due to Santaló that says that if a (finite) collection of axis-parallel rectangles is such that any small subcollection is aligned, then the whole collection is aligned. This is kind of surprising at first, because the condition only says that there is a line, but this line might be different for any choice of subcollection. The precise statement is as follows:
Theorem. Let
be a collection of rectangles with sides parallel to the axes (possibly intersecting). If for every choice of 6 rectangles of
of them, then there exists a line intersecting all rectangles of
To be precise, I should clarify that by line intersection it is meant intersection with the interior of the rectangle – so a line touching only the boundary is not allowed. The number 6 doesn’t have any special esoteric meaning here, to the best of my understanding – it just makes the argument work.
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