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"Did you ever" what? "Did you ever fancy"?
Richard Dawkins tweeted just now:
So-called idiots savants, calculating prodigies etc elicit a “just fancy that”, “well, did you ever?” amazement. But isn’t their existence telling us something important? When we compare brains with computers, we forget that some brains can near-instantly deliver cube roots.
Exclamatory Did you ever? is just a slightly more "non-intuitive" idiomatic construction than Well I never!. The choice of first, second, or third person singular as the subject makes no real difference to the meaning in...
1: Well I never!
2: Did you ever?
3: One would hardly think so!
...where the only real difference is that although it's perfectly natural to use I or You in #3 above, it's not idiomatic to change the subject like that with the first two. But other than that, they all mean pretty much the same thing (speaker is expressing HIS OWN surprise and/or rejection of something contextually relevant).
It's not really worth trying to deconstruct the grammar or "origin" of expressions like this. Most native speakers are perfectly familiar with the expressions themselves, but wouldn't have a clue how they came to become part of natural spoken language. This doesn't stop us using them, but note that #1 and #2 in particular are starting to become rather "dated, stylised" today.
The phrase is meant to express astonishment at some occurrence - whatever occurrence is under discussion. In this case it seems to be astonishment at some human thinking feats. Dawkins is suggesting that you should not be amazed.
(I tried a google search for documentation, but found only links to the Cole Porter song.)
"Did you ever?" is idiomatic for "That is surprising!"
It is short for "Did you ever see anything like it?"
In other words, it is elicited when the thing you are remarking on is so rare that it is unlikely that anyone has encountered it before. Hence the answer to "Did you ever see such a thing?" is expected to return the answer "No."
It has the same sort of force as "Well I never!" which of course is "Well, I have never seen anything like it before!" Or the older "Well, I never did!" which means the same.
All such phrases: "Did you ever?", "Well I never!" and "Well I never did!" are idioms and overwhelmingly commonly appear as they are presented.
