Not many people enjoy putting on those ridiculous contraptions designed to test your eyesight while straining to read a distant sight card and making up the last few lines.

BBC: Too late for Tudor

The recognition of these benefits, and of the price of failure, has brought the launch of a new trade round, which a year ago seemed distant, within sight.

ECONOMIST: World trade

If an object floating through space passes near the line of sight between the earth and a distant star, its gravity should, according to the theory of relativity, bend and focus the light from that star.

ECONOMIST: The dark side of cosmology