this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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Just gotta ask any of the 90% of the world who use it to find out. Americans hate this one simple trick!
Fun fact: there's quite a lot of countries that use "mixed metrics", with no real rhyme or reason for what uses old ancient imperial and what uses new shiny metric
UK - Miles for long distances, switch to meters for distances less than a mile, always use km in air and sea. Milk in pints, petrol in liters, water in ml, beer in pints. Human heights in Feet Inches, building heights in Meters. Human weights in a unit even Americans don't use anymore (Stone), animal weights in kg/g.
Really? Do people walk around in the UK and say "I weigh 11 stone"? "I lost 3 stone on this diet"?
Yessir, stone and lbs usually.
So 12 stone 8 for example. 14lbs to the stone.
Yeah, but does the kilometer have a cool origin like the mile? Checkmate math nerd.
I'd say it kind of does actually:
The Kilometer is defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from the Earth's North Pole to the equator along the meridian passing through Paris.
Vs
The mile originated with the Roman measurement of mille passus, meaning "one thousand paces," with a pace being five Roman feet. The modern 5,280-foot statute mile evolved in England, where the 1592 parliamentary act defined the mile as eight furlongs (660 feet each) to standardize the distance.
One is measured by earth, the other by stinky feet.
Yeah but earth is wobbly and imprecise so now we define the meter as "the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458th of a second"
That'a a cool definition. I wouldn't call it an origin though, that would still be the Earth measurement through Paris, which is also cool.
On ten-thousandth. The circumference through the poles is ~40,000km
over land or straight line?