Why do amercians call English people limeys?

I could be wrong about this one, but possibly not. I believe it originated with the English taking limes on their sailing ships in order to prevent scurvy. A lack of vitamin "c" was a particularly dangerous and serious problem back then because they could be gone for months at a time.

This apparently dates back to the days of Francis Drake and the seafaring nation. The fact that ships had to carry food and water for whatever journey there were undertaking could be a great problem, and of course this led to a lot of dietary problems. One of the biggest threats was Scurvy which was caused by a deficiency of Vitamin C. To combat this most ships carried fresh fruit as an easy source of vitamin C, and English ships were reknowned for using limes for this purpose. Obviously this dates back a few centuries, but the name of Limey has stuck with us acroos the years.