To save everybody the trouble of looking, the 500 billionth digit is 8.

Personally, I have a side project to calculate the first trillion digits of 1.

I'll save you the trouble. The trillionth digit is 9.

I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe.

Either 9 or 0... doesn't matter so much as long as you're consistent, really. 0.999... == 1.000...

The title should read 500 * 10^9 digits of e, that is american billion. European billion is 10^12, that may lead to some confusion...

Why do I get a downvote me on this? I'm european, and for me a billion = a million of millions, not a thousand of millions.

UK billion is also 1,000 million. what do europeans call a 1,000 million?

You can check

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000000000_(number)

"In modern (short scale) English usage, it is usually called a billion (although in many other languages and long scale usage, a billion means 1,000,000,000,000 - a million millions)."

"The term milliard can also be used to refer to 1,000,000,000; this terminology is rarely used in English, but often in other languages."

Here is explained

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

Well, I'm from Spain, and here 1,000,000 is "un millon", 1.000.000.000 is "un millardo" and 1,000,000,000,000 is "un billon".

I thought that a in US a billion were 1,000 million but in UK it were 1,000,000 million.