I live in a country where we don't use body parts for measuring, and a US billion is what call a milliard. One milliard is one thousand millions. One thousand milliards is one billion - the same way the british saw it before they started watching american television.

We in the UK used to spell Colour as Color.

After the Colony went to set up America, a new dictionary came out in the UK and blow, did not everyone like its new french-based spelling of words!

So color became colour amongst a pile of other words.

So technically the Americans spell their words in the original version and it was we in the UK that changed.

Still doesn't explain why they call a Torch a Flashlight or a Lift an Elevator though. ;-)





noone uses british billion may as well be an urban myth

Actually the British million is rarely used now. Like so many other things here in Britain, we have adopted the American version.

How long before we spell colour without the 'u'?

USA: 1,000,000,000 = 1 Billion
UK: 1,000,000,000,000 = 1 Billion (although not really since about 1950!)


Now they know who is to blame for that ever growing US national debt.

I never knew that about the billion thing. That really boggles my mind.