Great history lesson, DAW, and very interesting esoteric information. But: !! "the cornerstone of this building was lain by Queen Elizabeth II" !! Lain? Lain?? Arghh! You mean "the cornerstone of this building was laid by Queen Elizabeth II". Lain?! Worse than pled, even. Much, much worse.
Discussed today with some learned friends the man who leaped (leapt?) from a plane wearing a strange suit with wings and descended swiftly to earth, landing unharmed among a pile of cardboard boxes set up for the purpose.

I said he glided, m'learned friends said fell, and I think you would say "glid".

Well? I am sure your answer for which we out east wait with baited breath, will be swift in arriving and fit stuff for chewing over at our next meeting.

Thank you for all that, DA Wood. Very interesting indeed. But I think perhaps that Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Annapolis and indeed all ~polis name places are from the Greek 'polis', roughly speaking a community or city, with its own customs, rulers, style of Greek dialect, etc. From which 'politics'.
Tuscaloosa, great name, great place. And with a railway, there can indeed be a Tuscaloosa choo-choo.

Tuscaloosa. Still sounds great for that song, "Pardon me, boy, is that the Tuscaloosa choo-choo?". Will check it out.

PS: it's pleaded, not pled.

It seems Toosaloosa is a kind of garment or clothing, and not a place at all. Sorry.
Will check your earlier remarks about where you all got your college education and all those degrees.

DA Wood: you have today written this in your lengthy and multiple harangues about singular and plural in our mutual language:

"A great ways to compose sentences are:" followed by two rather odd ways to do so.

I suggest a break. Perhaps a sentimental trip to Toosaloosa? It sound nice and quiet.

A propos of nothing, but the name rings a bell: a cartoon in the UK during the time when the late Mr Gaddhafi was on the run and presence unknown to US and UK forces;

a figure with the unmistakable haircut and wearing shades, carrying a bag at a dusty, deserted railway station in the mid-Sahara asking a youth sitting idly in the sun by the tracks:

"Pardon me boy, is that the Ouagadougou choo-choo?"

Memory of this, to me, classic prompted by the name Toosaloosa. Must Google it. Is it on the railway network, as we in the UK call it?

"IBM are...", "The Parliament are...", even "The corporation are..."

No! These solecisms are unknown upon these islands on the eastern side of the herring pond. Dreadful.

The British have enough horrors to put up, Americanisms mostly. For example "he was tasked to source his (probably 'their, rather, owing to the naughtiness of the sexist term 'his') key materials from ... "

Fingernails scratching down an old-style blackboard sound sweeter.

"Everyone deserves our best." I hope they pleaded not guilty to your charge. Everyone (the audience) deserves our (the station's best), surely? Everyone (else) and 'we' are not the same person, so the number (singular/plural) need not match.

Porsche, I agree with you entirely, until the last few lines. The Commonwealth is an entity, one singular entity, and you would not use or hear "the Commonwealth are" in the UK. I have lived here for some decades, and never heard companies or organisations thought of as plural. "BP is putting up its prices again." If you do hear it used as plural "Shell are putting their prices again" it would make you suppose that it is the people who run Shell who did that. 'The House of Commons has voted'... even though it involves several hundred members. I cannot think I have ever heard of it being thought plural. If it were, it would be by elipsis, as "(members of ) the House of Commons have debated ..." but I have never heard it used this way.

D.A. Wood makes a most interesting point about the gender of nouns which do not relate to male or female 'things' in English as being not so much neuter as of no gender at all. When compared with all other Indo-European languages this would be a novel concept indeed.

By the way, 'das Madchen' (sorry about the missing umlaut, I know it should be there, but I don't know how to do it on my computer at this minute) is neuter in German because it is a diminutive: all -chen and -lein words are neuter. I don't know why, they just are. Even though it means "girl". So neuter in German is not a third gender, not non-masculine or non-feminine, just no gender at all, maybe? Same as what I thought about neuter (linguistic) gender in the first place? Excuse me while I go for an ice-bag to stick on my head while I think about this. Or not.

'In North American English, "that" is a perfectly-good subordinating conjunction.' So be it.

My argument is that it isn't perfectly good over on the eastern side of the Atlantic and it is hugely to be regretted that it is making its appearance everywhere now in the English-speaking world. I concede that it is everywhere to be found in the writings of PG Wodehouse even as far back as the 1910s and 1920s, and if he could do it, we can ...

So we can take the view, yeah, yeah, whatever, so long as we all understand each other and most folk get the drift of what we're saying, yeah, life goes on, know what I mean, gotta be honestand so on. But what is this site for, if note to grumble about "Pain" in the English?