Chong Zhemin

Came across this comment in Kit’s Blog. I googled and found this very interesting article. I bet most of you out there are unaware of these facts.

An English billion is 1,000,000,000,000, whereas an American billion is 1,000,000,000. An American trillion is the same as an English billion and an English trillion is a million million million.

However, with the Yankeefication of British things the English have started to use the American definition now, instead of the English one.

A Billion is a difficult number to comprehend. The next time you hear a Politician use the word “Billion,” casually — think about whether or not you want the politician spending your tax money.

A Billion Seconds ago — it was 1973.

A Billion Minutes ago — Jesus was alive.

A Billion Hours ago — our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

A Billion Days ago — No-One walked on two feet on earth.

Updated
Ok guys, might be wrong. I found this on another site. Anyone free enough to press the calculator and help me verify the information here?

We have to start out by noting that the definition of “billion” is not standardized. In some places and usages, a billion is a one followed by nine zeros, or one thousand million; in other cases, a billion is a one followed by twelve zeros, or one million million. In the U.S., the common usage of “billion” refers to a one followed by nine zeros (or 1,000,000,000), so that’s the standard we employ here.

* A billion seconds: One billion seconds is about 31.7 years, so going back in time a billion seconds would put us in 1972. (The discrepancy in the version cited above, which puts the year at 1959, might have come about because the example we collected was compiled or last updated in 1990.)

* A billion minutes: One billion minutes is approximately 1901 years, so travelling back to a time one billion minutes ago would land us in the year A.D. 102. This date is about seventy years too late to encompass the life of Jesus according to traditional accounts. (The discrepancy of several decades might be the result of someone’s faulty arithmetic or historical knowledge, or it could be an indication that this piece originated back in the 1930s.)

* A billion hours: One billion hours ago represents a time a bit over 114,000 years in the past, an era generally classified as the Lower Palaeolithic era, or the “Old Stone Age.”

* A billion days ago: Some versions of this piece include the line “A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.” A billion days is approximately 2.74 million years; the era defined by that time period is generally estimated to be about when the first species of the genus Homo appeared in Africa, having diverged from the Australopithecines.