Vanderbilt and the Yeggman. Vipers. Vigor, the Hammersmith wonder.

I have heard (from an unsubstantiated source I admit, but he seemed quite convinced) that aluminum was the original (English) coinage of that word, and that it was changed to aluminium only later, to fit the pattern of other elements such as chromium, curium, thulium, thalium, and so on (although platinum remains unaltered I can't help but observe). Our colonial cousins apparently retained the original spelling. If I were a more generous person, I'd assume it was because of a lofty sense of linguistic purity and piety, but I'm not, so I'm going to assume that it was either laziness or because additional letters in words give them a migraine. ;-)