To Americans and the French, a billion means a thousand millions (1,000,000,000, or 10 to the ninth, what some British call a milliard, a term that seems never to have been widely accepted).
According to Anglo history, Sir Francis Drake died of dysentery on January 27, 1596, aged 55 while anchored off the coast of Puerto Bello, Panama after an unsuccessful campaig â¦ n against the Spanish. He was buried at sea in a lead coffin, near Puerto Bello.
But a hydrocarbon frenzy in Pennsylvania is not without precedent. 153 years ago today, a hard-up wildcatter named Edwin Drake drilled the country's first oil well. But while the event itself was momentous, Drake's life remained tragic throughout. For the first decade of his adult life, he held odd jobs, according to Penn State's Urja DavÃ©. His first wife died in child birth.