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And every since has that poor kid believed that "Five hundred and one and one" was a valid number.

It kind-of-is, it's just not particularly well-formed/ambiguous linguistically.

A bit like 99 in French: quatre-vingt-dix-neuf

four twenties and ten and nine

I knew the Danes where counting in a crazy way but I didn't know the French did this as well.

One more reason I'm happy English is the most common international language I guess.

According to wikitionary [1] "four score and seven" was a commonplace way of saying "eighty seven" in 19th c. English.

Peano says it is a valid number.