For tens of thousands of years, humans have created colours through simple chemistry. At first we used dyes found in nature such as berries and charcoal. Later, new pigments were synthesised in the lab.

By now, you...

The hard-drinking Aussie is the stuff of legend and lore. But there’s little proof Australians drank more than other colonials and by some accounts they drank less (points made in Sidney Baker’s The Australian Language).

But, of course,...

A recent suggestion that new housing on inner-city public land should start from a presumption of 100% social housing prompted indignation in government circles. “We can’t condemn another generation of Victorians to live in housing poverty,” huffed the housing minister, Martin Foley.

It’s curious, then, that we heard barely...