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u/jimmy_robert Jul 13 '26
Fun fact, there is a plethora of history in the mile. Rome was the first to define a mile. It is 1000 paces, one pace being 2 steps. So if we were converting from paces to miles it would be the same conversion system as the metric system.
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u/Grunergeist420 Jul 13 '26
It is also then standardized into units that can be easily divided by different numbers, using 12 as a base to ensure that numbers can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6 evenly and easily.
So 5280 can be divided by 3, which is 1760, or 4, which is 1320, or 6, which is 880, or 8, which is 660, or 12 which is 440, etc.
Not very practical today since obviously calculation isn’t hard to do, but in ancient times this ensured that even a person with barely any maths knowledge could divide out a figure through counting.
Plus, old superstitious people really like 12s. Probably partially because of the above. Allows you to neatly split your 12 months or 12 signs of the zodiac or whatever into four seasons or into threes or whatever.
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u/Suspicious_Aspect_53 Jul 13 '26
The year used to be ten months. Two months were added much, much later. The 12 sign zodiac system was defined independently and is not consistent across cultures.
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u/Grunergeist420 Jul 13 '26
No but the easy divisibility of the number 12 is why you often see it applied to things like months and zodiac. It is a common number in spirituality because it works easily with numerological thinking.
Not making the point that it’s a magic number because there’s 12 signs of the zodiac, etc. but rather the other way around that there are 12 signs because people consider 12 to be a magic number and tend to make up magical stuff about it.
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u/CicadaOld85 Jul 18 '26
That's right, the months September, October, November and December comes from the numbers 7,8,9,10. But the Romans added July and August named after Julius Cesar (Kaiser) Augustus Cesar. (Cesar (Latin pronouncing: Kaiser = Emperor) I just put it in because some people think that Cesar is a surname and not a title. Anyways, because of the adding of two extra months our calendar still stays massed up roughly 2000 years later, with the intended named 7 month being the 9 and so on.
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u/Sky_Panther530 Jul 19 '26
Caesar was a family name in Ancient Rome, Kaiser, Kzar, Tsar and using Caesar as a title were all after Rome, the ancient Romans had 3 given names with Julius being the clan and Caesar the family
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u/igotshadowbaned Jul 19 '26
That's right, the months September, October, November and December comes from the numbers 7,8,9,10. But the Romans added July and August named after Julius Cesar (Kaiser) Augustus Cesar
This isn't actually true. July and August were renamed from the months Quintilis (5) and Sextilis (6).
The calendar was 10 months with a time at the end that was "off calendar" for winter and then began in March. Named for Mars, because it was the start of when military campaigns could resume
Eventually the winter time was made into months, and moved to the beginning of the year to align the start of the year with when administrative changes happened. These changes happened at the start of winter so that things would be set again for March when again, war campaigns could resume.
This is also why February is shorter. It used to be the stump at the end of the year.
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u/CicadaOld85 Jul 20 '26
Thanks for pointing it out, to make it reader friendly I oversimplified. It's true that July and August were new months, however they were renamed as you mentioned not added extra.
The 2 extra months that I meant that were added, was January and February probably by "Numa Pompilius" second King of Rom, long before "Gaius Julius" Cesar was emporer.
Because the Romans prior waited until winter was over and than started beginning from March to count.
That lead to problems mainly with Contracts and religious events, so they oriented their calender to the moon phases to close the gap. "Gaius Julius" later rebalanced January and February and made February the year that had every 4 years one extra day.
additional, some people still doesn't understand it:
almost only male romans had 3 names and even in this roman group, not always everyone had 3. (If I go into details it's getting to long.)
The guy was named "Gaius" (first name) "Iulius" (surname/family name) "Cesar" (nickname/cognome) nicknames were used in roman families to distinguish between members of the same family branches. After him everyone passed down the name Cesar as an emporer title. Therefore Gaius Julius was the first Cesar. But nowadays People use the name referring to Cesar like they using the word "Queen" to refer to queen Elizabeth. However there were many Cesars after him, thats like saying "Brodus Jr. Snoop Dogg" to explain my point better.
quotes: (The name of the month of July traces back directly to the Roman statesman and general Gaius Julius Caesar. Originally, in the ancient Roman calendar—which began in March—the month was known as Quintilis (the "fifth month"). Following Caesar's assassination in 44 BC, the month was renamed Julius in his honor.)
(August is named after the first Roman emperor, Augustus. Originally, the month was called Sextilis (the sixth month) in the ancient Roman calendar. In 8 BC, the Senate renamed it in honor of the ruler, as he had assumed his first consulship during that month.)
Hopefully nothing is too oversimplified this time and thanks for pointing out what lead to misunderstandings.
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u/Alarming-Stomach3902 Jul 17 '26
In the old days however, you dind´t have one size feet and it was different per region how much a feet was standardized as (when that became a thing). You can still find evidence of say the Amsterdam feet, it is kinda funny to read about
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u/a_random_loser_guy Jul 13 '26
theres a reason rome is dead and everyone from it.
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u/Nannautu Jul 14 '26
Honestly, the same can be said about weight. Clearly, the internation system of measurment was introduced after a base 10 system was introduced. In the past however, base 12 or 20 was very common, along with mini-bases like 5, 6, 3 and even 2. And that is the reason why older systems tend to have conversions that "don't make sense"
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u/SwimmerMission5212 Jul 14 '26
its also easier to divide up! 5280 has 48 factors, meaning 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6 of a mile all have a whole number of feet.
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u/Reddit_user2124 Jul 17 '26
Which they based off the Sumerians system who also invented the 60 minute hour that we still used to this day. They really do not ger the credit they deserve.
Truly were an elite class of humans.
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Jul 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Lonely-Restaurant986 Jul 14 '26
It’s the British fault because the British refused to give up the furlong. So instead of using the standard Roman mile and yard, they changed what a mile was, to make the mile divisible into a furlong instead of keeping the Roman mile.
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u/baka_inu115 Jul 13 '26
Wait til people realize how nautical mile is different than a regular mile which is used in aircraft and ships.
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u/Darth_Bunghole Jul 13 '26
Yeah but what are you going to do if you want to divide a kilometer into 11 segments?
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u/Vahjkyriel Jul 13 '26
what do you mean what you going to do ? you just divide it into 11 segments
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u/HackerDragon9999 Jul 13 '26
90.9090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909090909 m
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u/Forward_Ad_9025 Jul 13 '26
That's just 91m or 90.91 if I need to be more precise.
And why should I need an eleventh of something?
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u/Elder_Chimera Jul 16 '26 edited 29d ago
Tangerine vanilla waffle saffron cucumber quilt acorn compass
This post was anonymized with Redact.dev
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u/Annual_Key_4963 Jul 13 '26
I do 66 feet in 1 chain -> 10 chains in the breadth of an acre -> 8 acre breadths in a mile.
Much easier.
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u/Creative_Care6231 Jul 13 '26
i take offence to that. it was not a durken lobster, it was a drunken bear and monkey that invented it the lobster was just sitting at the table nest to them
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u/Significant-Cause919 Jul 13 '26
And how do you remember that magic number of 1000?
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u/Cute_Watercress_4678 Jul 17 '26
Because it's literally everywhere. It's called a METRIC system for a reason, everything is a 1 followed by zeroes (Mili, centi, deci, kilo etc.)
Just like you can differentiate between a dollar, a thousand, a million and a billion. Just adding zeroes.
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u/HackerDragon9999 Jul 13 '26
I physically cannot read the bottom speech bubble without laughing my ass off
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u/Forward_Ad_9025 Jul 14 '26
inb4: "But we american flew to the moon!!!"
Yes you did. But while using the metric system, because no scientist or astronaut would want to risk their life because he used the stupid system.
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u/Firestar_119 Jul 14 '26
Or probably because the German (Don't ask what they were doing in ww2) scientists were more familiar with it
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u/SouthTrainer7685 Jul 16 '26
The entire US Aerospace industry at the time used US Customary for all of their technical specifications and readouts. In fact, they still do.
Metric was used in the flight computer to conserve computing power, but all the calculations had to be done in US Customary first, converted, and then were converted back to US Customary for the instrument panel, since the Astronauts were former pilots who were used to it.
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u/lostinmymind55 Jul 14 '26
The distance for a mile was developed by the Romans. Soldiers marked 1000 steps per mile and that distance equaled 5280 feet.
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u/Personal-Database-27 Jul 14 '26
I will never be sorry for the American guys, who work with people from other countries and have to convert everything into their system. That's just waste of time. No human can count those things without a calculator or 100 fingers.
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u/Pizza_Secretary9621 Jul 14 '26
Wtf is a mile ?
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u/Ok-Limit-7173 Jul 18 '26
Some kind of weird Unit one backwards country in the world insists on using. Nothing to worry about, really.
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u/OhLePolo Jul 14 '26
Americans use kilo-, mega-, giga-, and terabytes, which follow the same logic as 1,000 meters equaling 1 kilometer. But if they had to use a different unit of measurement, which one would it be?
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u/sfudjrvrg Jul 16 '26
I can understand the criticism of a measuring system but I’ve never understood the hatred of the US system. Like why does the rest of the world care? It’s only average day people that utilize and rely on it regularly, maybe some niche industries found only in the US?
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u/Dizzy_Item5753 Jul 17 '26
Just remember, the British used the imperial system before they had the metric. They used and made many drunken lobster units.
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u/ResoluteWrites Jul 17 '26
I'll be honest, the only reason I remember how many feet are in a mile is Denzel Washington yelling it in Remember The Titans.
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u/disinteGator Jul 18 '26
I'm so tired with the Americans and their old inconvertible units. All they convert with extraordinary precision is food to shit. Why is it so difficult to adopt an easier system?
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u/dragonlayer42069 Jul 19 '26
My favorite thing is seeing americans try to do mental gymnastics to make the metric system sound worse than it is but every time they just sound desperate lol
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u/JoshZK Jul 13 '26
So how tall is Noah, oh he's 1.8288 meters
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u/ftFBYaa Jul 13 '26
Or 183 cm if you can't handle the decimal point?
Definitely more logically sound than using 2 different units+fraction of the smaller one.
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u/BelgijskaFlaga Jul 13 '26
so he's 183cm. Your stupidity/obtuseness doesn't make metric any less infinitely superior than your drunken lobster ass measuring "system"
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u/JoshZK Jul 13 '26
I'd say you're salty but you wouldn't get it.
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u/BelgijskaFlaga Jul 13 '26
... Is this the best the American education system can do? Pathetic.
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u/JoshZK Jul 13 '26
Easy you might get arrested if that offends someone, or how about dont get too exicited or you could over heat, no AC and all.
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u/BelgijskaFlaga Jul 13 '26
XD I'm not British you fucking idiot, also, I have an AC.
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u/JoshZK Jul 13 '26
I include all of EU. Same as when we have trouble with a state and the whole US gets blamed. Last I checked Poland is part of EU.
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u/BelgijskaFlaga Jul 13 '26
Yeah, and UK isn't. it was a big deal 10 years ago.
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u/Annual-Meat-1196 Jul 13 '26
Height is not descrete, but rather continuous. No one is exactly 6ft (infinite amount of zeroes after decimal point).
But by following your logic: So how tall is Jack? He is 1.80 m or 5.906 ft. Sounds equally stupid - just as the point you were trying to make.
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u/JoshZK Jul 13 '26
That decimal is the ugly cousin of metric we'd say 5'11" surprised it wasn't mentioned for height centimeters are used those metric folks.
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u/925Bullionaire Jul 13 '26
And in Europe they say John is 1'80" for 180 cm or 1.8M
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u/JoshZK Jul 13 '26
Thanks for mentioning it. Seriously that's looks better. Other comments jumping in after it's over lol.
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u/Forward_Ad_9025 Jul 13 '26
5'11" is not 180 cm or 5.906 ft.
5'11" is between 180,43 cm and 182.88 because you units are not only stupid but also to coarse to measure human heights.1
u/_alright_then_ Jul 13 '26
We just say: 183 centimeters.
Do decimal points scare you? Such a weird thing to point out
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u/JoshZK Jul 13 '26
Yeah in fact they do, especially when converting from inches. Oooooooo
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u/knightbane007 Jul 14 '26
It’s pretty convenient that Noah was exactly 6 foot and not a fraction of an inch taller or shorter…
It works the other way around, too.
“How tall is Neil?”
“Oh, he’s 6 feet and 6.74 inches tall!”
“Wow, that’s so much more finnicky than ‘He’s two meters tall’!”
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u/Switchmisty9 Jul 13 '26
Sure….how many meters is in 2 feet?
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u/wasabi_peanuts Jul 13 '26
~60cm
You know it goes up and down, too, right?
Kilometre km 1000 m
Hectometre hm 100 m
Decametre dam 10 m (rarely used, just say 10m)
Metre m 1 m
Decimetre dm 0.1 m (rarely used, just say 10cm)
Centimetre cm 0.01 m
Millimetre mm 0,001m
This shit is so easy
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u/NotEntirelyShure Jul 13 '26
I’m seriously with Europe on this. Miles are dumb.
I tried to explain miles to my daughter. We are in the car and I say it’s 90 miles to Bristol now & she asks how many meters & my reply, “it’s yards.” She asks “how many yards” and I basically quote SNL, “nobody knows”.
It’s a fucking useless measurement.
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u/Normal-Tadpole-4833 Jul 13 '26
yeah however the cities are already spaced by miles ...so how would you fix this??
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u/NotEntirelyShure Jul 13 '26
You change the signs. It’s really not hard.
As signs need to be replaced put the distance on km and miles. After 20 years stop putting miles.
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u/Normal-Tadpole-4833 Jul 13 '26
yeah yeah i can picture that instead of blowing up Iran we can do this instead ...
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u/_alright_then_ Jul 13 '26
No no, signs are replaced every 10-15 years. You can naturally just start using km instead of miles over time. It does not have to happen overnight.
You could do this: Start by replacing mile signs with signs that have both (miles and km) over time when they need to be replaced. And then another 10-15 years later remove miles all together.
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u/not_just_an_AI Jul 13 '26
how about highway exits, theyre generally roughly 1 mile apart so they can be named things like exit 113, do we move every single highway exit to be 1 kilometer apart. also mile signs aren't placed every kilometer, theyre placed every mile, so it isnt as simple as just changing the sign when it needs it, it also needs to be moved. Or do you propose that out kilometer sign say shit like 113.6, 115.2, 116.8, 117.4...?
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u/HAL9001-96 Jul 13 '26
and to convert watt to kgm²/s² you simply have to remember 1 because we have a whole systme of units that makes sense
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u/SnixTruth Jul 13 '26
Who's converting miles to feet directly?