ghoti_mhic_uait

This is old information. The UK adopted the short scale billion (1,000,000,000) in 1974, to be used in all official statistics. The rest of Europe uses the long scale billion (1,000,000,000,000), though France and Italy used the short scale in science since the 1600s, converted mostly over to the short scale for most purposes in the 1800s, before officially moving back to the long scale (in the 1960s for France, and the 1990s for Italy).