This was a test of browser conformance to the CSS specification's statement that border-color, if unspecified, is the same as color. It now has various weird things too.

the quick brown fox

jumped over the

lazy dog

It uses the :first-letter pseudoclass to implement "drop caps" - note the margin trickery to make the bottom of the letter touch the bottom of the second line, without causing empty space on the third line.

The title at the top uses a series of absolutely positioned overflow:hidden elements to create a banded gradient effect.