On July 2, 2021, the United States vacates Bagram Airfield, the U.S. Air Force Base north of Kabul, and turns it over to Afghan forces, a major milestone in the longest war in U.S. military history. Bagram, previously used by the Soviet Union to store aircraft hangars, had become the epicenter of the U.S. occupation. […]

The post U.S. withdraws from Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan appeared first on HISTORY.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 2, 2025 is:

galumph • \guh-LUMF\  • verb

To galumph is to move in a loud and clumsy way.

// I could hear them galumphing around in the attic in search of old family photo albums.

See the entry >

Examples:

“Dragons! Dragons roaring! Dragons squawking! Dragons sizing each other up! Dragons galumphing over the sand so awkwardly it reminds you that dragons are creatures of the air, not the earth.” — Glen Weldon, NPR, 28 July 2024

Did you know?

Bump, thump, thud. There’s no doubt about it—when someone or something galumphs onto the scene, ears take notice. Galumph first lumbered onto the English scene in 1872 when Lewis Carroll used the word to describe the actions of the vanquisher of the Jabberwock in Through the Looking Glass: “He left it dead, and with its head / He went galumphing back.” Carroll likely constructed the word by splicing gallop and triumphant, as galumph did in its earliest uses convey a sense of exultant bounding. Other 19th-century writers must have liked the sound of galumph, because they began plying it in their own prose, and it has been clumping around our language ever since.

By Christian J. Collier