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Supermassive binary black holes in galactic nuclei evolve in three stages: (1) The binary contracts by ejecting stars from its neighbourhood by the slingshot process, (2) The binary loses angular momentum via slingshot ejections and becomes very eccentric, and (3) The binary enters the strong gravitational wave regime and quickly contracts and becomes circularized again. Aarseth (2006) observed all three regimes in his N-body simulations. Ignoring stage (2) evolution leads to what has been called the ”final parsec problem”. We show that the stage (2) evolution follows from the work of Sundman (1907). Had the work of Sundman and the follow-up paper by Szebehely (1973) been more widely known, there would have been no reason to propose the final parsec problem, and Aarseth’s discovery of the stage (2) evolution would not have come as a surprise.