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Given a point on a torus there exist exactly 4 circumferences that lie on the surface of the torus passing through that point. The two non-obvious ones are called Villarceau circles.

Wikipedia gives a proof of their existence with analytic geometry. I'm interested in a proof with synthetic geometry because of this anecdote by Emilio Segrè:

On a different occasion, while I was waiting to be called to an oral examination, Majorana gave me a synthetic proof for the existence of Villarceau's circles on a torus. I did not fully understand it, but memorized it on the spot. As I entered the examination room, Professor Pittarelli asked me, as was his wont, whether I had prepared a special topic. "Yes, on Villarceau's circles," I said, and I proceeded immediately to repeat Majorana's words before I forgot them. The professor was impressed and congratulated me on such an elegant proof, which was new to him.

(From here, emphasis mine)

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    +1 for the question. Often synthetic proofs shed intuitive light not found in analytic proofs (and probably vice-versa as well).2012-03-23

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This proof can be found in Anonymous - Section du tore par un plan tangent à cette surface et passant par son centre in Nouvelle Annales de Mathématiques 1.18 (1859), pp. 258-261, which is available here.

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    In the same vein, there is a simple synthetic proof of the Dandelin spheres theorem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandelin_spheres#Proof_that_the_curve_has_constant_sum_of_distances_to_foci).2017-02-10