From: cdaniels@web1.calweb.com   
      
   Johnny B Good  wrote:   
   >> "Charles Daniels"  wrote in message   
      
   >  It's always struck me as a rather odd 'americanism' to mispronounce the   
   > word "aluminium' in that way. Afaicr, they don't mispronounce words like   
   > sodium, plutonium, polonium, calcium... and so on and so forth (etc :-).   
      
   That is because aluminum was actually named in the same way that other   
   metals had been named before - platinum, molybdenum, tantalum - etc.   
      
   The guy who discovered it initially called it aluminum.  However about 5   
   years later it became fashionable to name newly discovered elements with   
   "ium" suffixes.   
      
   So the Oxford English Dictionary decided to record it as "ium", even   
   though this is actually wrong.   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)