TITLE: Pigeonhole principle (I think): colored points in the plane
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: Suppose that each points in $\Bbb R^2$ is colored red, green or blue. 
Prove that either there are two points of the same color a distance $1$ unit apart, or there is an equilateral triangle of side length $\sqrt3$ all of whose vertices are the same color.
I thought I would separate each point into cases. Like, the combinations you can have are $(R,R),(R,B),(R,G)$, etc. and something about there being an infinite number of points, so the ones that are $(R,R),(G,G)$ or $(B,B)$ have to not be empty? Not sure if this helps.
I also tried putting all the points on the unit circle and looked at the $\sqrt3$ triangles created by tangent circles all with centers of the same color.

REPLY [5 votes]: You can actually prove more. You can prove that there are two points of distance $1$ part with the same color in all cases. Suppose not, and that every two points of distance one apart have different colors. Suppose the origin is colored blue. I claim that every point on a circle of radius $\sqrt{3}$ centered at the origin is also colored blue. Draw the radius out to any point and put two equilateral triangles on the radius as in BaronVT's picture where you have a dotted line (representing the radius) bisecting two back-to-back triangles. The two middle vertices are colored red and green (in some order) because the origin is colored blue. But this forces the vertex lying on the circle to be blue. Now that we have a circle of radius $\sqrt{3}$, just pick a chord of length $1$. This will give two points colored blue of distance one apart, which is a contradiction.