"We are living through a historic economic meltdown..."

Undeniably. Yet it should still be referred to as, "AN historic economic meltdown".

No need to devalue grammar along with everything else.

Agree with the article to a point, but I still think the "SWINE FLU" outbreak was more of a political ploy for the Obama administration to cry wolf, when in reality it was more to stroke Obama's ego in saying "look what I did"!!!

@samhill, the nitpicker.

"A well known grammar rule says that we should use 'an' before vowel sounds; for example, an accident, an item, an hour. We use 'a' otherwise: a book, a hotel, a university.

Notice that we say 'an hour,' not 'a hour.' The choice of 'a' or 'an' is based upon the sound of the word, not the spelling. Hour sounds like it starts with a vowel sound (ow); hence, we use an.

Following this rule, we would say 'a historic,' not 'an historic' because (for most speakers) historic doesn't start with a vowel sound.

Words of three or more syllables that start with h are treated differently by some speakers, though. (This may be because of the tendency of some regional accents to drop initial Hs.)

A quick bit of Googling reveals that as of December 2008 the phrase 'a hypothesis' is used on 2.22 million pages (80%), and 'an hypothesis' on 538,000 pages (20%). Similarly, 'a historic' gets 70% of the popular vote, and 'an historic' only 30%.

Summary

'A historic' is more common in online writing, but both usages are sufficiently common to be considered correct."

(on-line source)

There is something that was passed over in the history of the Black Death. A generation after, the survivors did better that people before the Black Death. Loosing 25% of the population increased the resources for the survivors.

What's to stop us getting over this "economic meltdown". The government.