Barry Evans

'I have been extremely ill used by the gentlemen who I might have expected better treatment from.' — John Harrison, on his struggle to receive the reward for solving the Longitude Problem For centuries, the Royal Navy was the mightiest maritime force in t... See more

'… just as the battle was growing warm, day was on a sudden changed into night. This event had been foretold by Thales, the Milesian, who forewarned the Ionians of it, fixing for it the very year in which it actually took place. The Medes and Lydians, whe... See more

The “obstetrical dilemma” was born, so to speak, in 1960, not in a medical journal, but in the pages of Scientific American magazine. There, anthropologist Sherwood Washburn proposed that the ease with which most non-human primates give birth when compare... See more

Every year, we see in the news and elsewhere information on the latest cost-of-living change. Comments follow that it is only 2% or 2.5%, which isn’t bad — or so say the experts. Well, it may not be so awful for one year, but if you go back in time — like... See more

“The fish is the last to see the water.” — Anthropologist Ruth Benedict Our lives are filled with obvious phenomena that sit right in front of our noses (sometimes literally), yet we often miss seeing them at all. I call it Purloined LetterSyndrome, after... See more