Aluminum =/= aluminium

When I was a college student at the University of Aberdeen (I spent my junior year from Wabash overseas in Scotland, doncha know) I was admonished by one of my professors for misspelling the element aluminum. 

See, he didn't know I was an American, and I didn't know - at the time - that the Brits spelled aluminum with an extra i - aluminium.

So, just why do we spell that element differently than they do?

For a few years now I've been telling a story of the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa) changing the name because it sounded better in their advertising back in the 1880's.

The story that Michael Quinion tells in his book about the etymology of words and phrases in the English language is somewhat similar to that but isn't quite the same.

Check out the story in his book - or on Google Books here.