Let the wheels of the carriage be each four feet in diameter, so that if a wheel has a mark made upon it, and begins to move forward from that mark in making its revolution on the surface of the road, it will have covered the definite distance of twelve and a half feet on reaching that mark at which it began to revolve.
— from The Ten Books on Architecture by Vitruvius Pollio

On May 10th, 1869, the grounds and institution for the Corcoran Art Gallery was deeded to trustees, and later was incorporated by Congress, being exempted forever from taxation.
— from Hidden Treasures; Or, Why Some Succeed While Others Fail by Harry A. Lewis

Severe military critics have sometimes been disposed to find fault with Early, not merely for scattering his army—which, though certainly a fault, was handsomely made good by the rapid concentration, —but even for fighting his battle at Winchester at all.
— from History of the Nineteenth Army Corps by Richard B. (Richard Biddle) Irwin

No help, then, could be expected from France if Spain attacked Elizabeth for her “heresy”; and the Queen and her wise minister were fain to conciliate a foe they were not powerful enough to face in the open.
— from The Great Lord Burghley: A study in Elizabethan statecraft by Martin A. S. (Martin Andrew Sharp) Hume

No intelligence would be transmitted; since no message could be even filed for sending.
— from Certain Success by Norval A. Hawkins

In 1632 Prynne wrote: “The whole Catholicke Church (as Alchuvinus and others write), appointed a solemn publike faste upon this our New Yeare’s Day (which fast it seems is now forgotten), to bewail these heathenish enterludes, sports, and lewd idolatrous practices which had been used on it: prohibiting all Christians, under pain of excommunication, from observing the Calends, or first of January (which we now call New Yeare’s Day) as holy, and from sending abroad New Yeare’s Gifts upon it (a custom now too frequent), it being a mere relique of paganisme and idolatry, derived from the heathen Romans’ feast of two-faced Janus, and a practice so execrable unto Christians that not only the whole Catholicke Church, but even four famous Councils”
— from Archaic England An Essay in Deciphering Prehistory from Megalithic Monuments, Earthworks, Customs, Coins, Place-names, and Faerie Superstitions by Harold Bayley