Talk:Question (The Moody Blues song)

'Thousand million'

A small point raised by the quotation of the lyric "Why do we never get an answer, when we're knocking at the door/ With a thousand million questions about hate and death and war?" is that the 'thousand million' phrase today appears at best poetic and at worst vaguely innumerate. In 1970, however, this was correct 'British English' for the number 1,000,000,000. It would be another four years before the UK switched, virtually by prime ministerial fiat, to the 'short scale' numbering system used by the USA, in which 1,000,000,000 is represented by the term 'billion'. Prior to 1974, the UK remained on the 'long scale' system, in which 'billion' meant 1,000,000,000,000 – a million million. Grubstreet (talk) 08:30, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

References

Sometimes called "Questions", ie plural

The band appear to introduce the song as "Questions" in this live 1970 performance. Batternut (talk) 21:19, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

description

What is this song about? --Evope (talk) 02:55, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

"a thousand million questions about hate and death and war". 1970 => Vietnam. Dicklyon (talk) 03:09, 5 June 2020 (UTC)