Mile-dly interesting read about miles

[b5blue]

Ever wonder how a mile is a mile long? https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-are-there-5-280-feet-in-a-mile?utm_source=pocket-newtab/

[green69rt]

Fun.

Now, reading thru, I see that a English pound is 7000 grains (defined as grains of barley) so to get an ounce you divide 7000 by 16 and get 437.5. Someones going to have fun counting out 437 grains of barley and then cutting the last one in half.  I won't even get into furlongs and fortnights...

This could go on and on.   

[John_Kunkel]

"The furlong wasn't always just an arcane unit of measure that horseracing fans gabbed about; it once had significance as the length of the furrow a team of oxen could plow in a day. In 1592, Parliament set about determining the length of the mile and decided that each one should be made up of eight furlongs. Since a furlong was 660 feet, we ended up with a 5,280-foot mile."

A team of oxen could only plow 660 feet in one day? Days must be one hour long in Britain. 

[XH29N0G]

I had to look this one up, short version and long version

The size of the rocket engine was determined by the width of a horse's ass.

Her goes(from the internet)

• When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB's had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track
• The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads.
• the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
• the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
• the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
• Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
• Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
• And Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses (Two horses' asses).

[b5blue]

 

[green69rt]

 

[MoparMike68]

Wonder how many asses a Dana 60 with some fatties are?