To Befuddled American
By A. Boyer
Posted Friday 31st August 2007 14:28 GMT
Sorry, I'm confused. All of these articles lately are referring to MPH. Since when did Britain use miles per hour? Are we talking about 179 MPH or 179 KPH/111 MPH?
-A befuddled American
Here in the old country we have used miles for quite some time. Since about 56 AD actually, after we were invaded by the Roman Legions. Romans invented miles.
From Wiki: A unit of distance called a mile was first used by the Romans and denoted a distance of 1000 paces (1 pace is 2 steps, 1000 paces being, in Latin, mille passus) or 5000 Roman feet, and corresponded to about 1480 meters, or 1618 modern yards.
The current definition of a mile as 5,280 feet (as opposed to 5000) dates to the 13th century, and was confirmed by statute in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; the change was needed to accommodate the rod which (as opposed to the mile) was a measure ensconced in legal documents.
The USA uses miles because we were your colonial masters.
You also use inches, feet and yards, because we were your colonial masters.
You speak a sort of English, because yes - you guessed it - we were your colonial masters.
Somewhere along the way you lot got a bit bolshy, and changed the fluid measures. Thus a US gallon is smaller than an Imperial (UK) gallon - so not everything in the USA is bigger.
Here's another shocker - not every country in the world uses dollars as currency.
And another! Not every country in the world drives on the right. Old civilisations do (UK, Japan ....), because 90% of people are right-handed, so on horse-back armed with a sword, you approached a stranger whilst riding on the left of the track / road.
Driving (riding) on the right was introduced by Napoleon, as a demonstration of 'out with the old, in with the new', and you lot went for it.
I can only assume that, like this country, history is no longer on the US schools curriculum either.