Bill Studenmund wrote:
> 
> Someone looked it up for me, and all I have to say is, "LOL."
> 
> It seems that both American English and British English got billion from
> French, just that the French arithmeticians changed their minds between
> the two times! The French then changed back to the million^2 definition in 
> 1948.
 > So we can both blame the French.

http://www.m-w.com/mw/table/number.htm says:
"The American system of numeration for denominations above one million 
was modeled on the French system but more recently the French system has 
been changed to correspond to the German and British systems"

If they're right, then the blame is on a lot of nations:)

cheers,
mouss