在 Bill Bryson 的 "A brief history of nearly everything" 里面有一段有趣的关于 "aluminum" and "aluminium" 的典故:
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The confusion over the aluminum/aluminium spelling arose because of some uncharacteristic indecisiveness on Davy's part. When he first isolated the element in 1808, he called it alumium. For some reason he thought better of that and changed it to aluminum four years later. Americans dutifully adopted the new term, but many British users disliked aluminum, pointing out that is disrupted the -ium pattern established by sodium, calcium, and strontium, so they added a vowel and syllable.
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