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CertainCertainties t1_jd73yhi wrote

As an Australian, where we changed from miles to kilometres in the 1970s, am trying to remember the imperial measurements that Myanmar, Liberia and the US still use.

So an inch is the king's thumb. Three of those make the scrote, or Richard III's scrotum. And 12 inches makes a king's foot (King Alfred's?). And 3 of those make King Henry VIII's armspan, or a yard. And a bunch of those make a mile. How many?

Has any American considered their current imperial measuring system might be a tad feudal, monarchic and random? (Even though I did invent the 'scrote', the rest of the real imperial units are still a sort of weird, inbred form of measurements you'd reckon would be used by men married to their sisters.)

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[deleted] t1_jd8r7t8 wrote

[deleted]

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Superb_Elderberry_85 t1_jd9mzqn wrote

Piss off. The US system is an adaptation of the Imperial System:

https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/references/weights-and-measures/

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Osama_Bin_Drankin t1_jd7o2is wrote

Lol, the UK still uses MPH too. The funny thing is in the US, we learn both metric and US customary in school. When I did concrete research in college, all our work was published in metric. Our professors would also purposely mix units in problems to screw with us lol.

Our military, NASA, and some of our industries use metric. Our medicine, alcohol, and soft drinks are measured in metric. All of our scientific research is done in metric. Basically, we could fully switch to metric if we really wanted to, but tbh, there just isn't any political will to do so. Things that need to be in metric, are already in metric.

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