When Captain James Cook anchored in New Zealand after a long voyage across the Pacific Ocean he was probably dying for a cup-of-tea. It was already a popular drink in England by the 18th Century when he sailed from Whitby,
Some animals have few human friends, like bats. We had a little brown bat tucked inside folded wings, like dead leaves, hanging over a rocker in our porch. It was a welcome guest. But ask the public about the most
It won’t be long before snp is added to the pantheon of approved English words in the OED. It will sit among those rarest of words, those that lack a vowel like the crafty Welsh invented—cwm (a mountain hollow), crwth
The back of a Cornflakes box is a good deal more absorbing than another person’s family tree. Genealogy is a rather personal game of history. Our interest seems to gain momentum with age, which may unfortunately mean we are too
The gut feelings of psychic “scatomancers” who studiously examined the color, shape, and buoyancy of poo to forecast well-being and life prospects were more reliable than palm-reading, tarot cards, and astrology. They had “data,” and now we have the microbiome.