A big number by any standards

I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said that Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language. Certainly there is much room for confusion over words like "hood", "jelly", "fag" and such like, but for the most part these are not likely to cause much more than amusement or embarrassment. But what about "billion"? To most Brits (and to most of the rest of the world) this means, and has always meant, a million million, whereas to an American it means a thousand million. Not exactly a minor distinction. Apparently it's all down to the French, who back in the 15th Century defined a billion as a million million, and that was taken on board by the then civilised world, but then, some 200 years later and for reasons nobody has ever been able to understand, they changed their mind and redefined it as a thousand million, and this is the definition which was adopted by the then newly emerging United States. Just to really confuse the issue, some 60 years ago the French readopted their original definition of a million million! In the 1970's the British Government decided to adopt the American billion in all official Government documents, but beware - there are still those (like me) who stick to the original definition.