A friend, knowing I was interested in the person/people question, found the entry and commentary below that I paste here:

"I 'rediscovered' a book--Index To English, Seventh Edition, 1982, by a couple of folks named Ebbitt--seems they've been doing this book since 1939. Here's their entry for

people, persons

People has long been used as a collective noun referring to a group, but as recently as the early part of this century, it was regarded as nonstandard when used with numerical quantifiers as the plural of person, as in "Five people are here." Though formal usage still tends to prefer persons, people is now thoroughly established in all plural uses.... Not surprisingly, people-persons is a case of divided usage.

Just for the record,
Wordwind