While some may think that feet and inches are “strange” units of measurement in comparison to the metric system, fear not; some people use even more convoluted systems to determine their measurements. What are some units of measurement that you think don’t work? What are some obscure ones you think should be used more often?
One night, in 1958, a fraternity at MIT charged its pledges with measuring the length of the Harvard Bridge between Cambridge and Boston, Massachusetts. The pledges' shortest member was Oliver Smoot, at 5'7". He lay down on the bridge, and they rolled his body to measure the length of the whole thing from beginning to end. It ended up being 364.4 Smoots, give or take the length of an ear. The unbelievability of this unit isn't that it was made, but that it somehow endured as a niche, but popular, unit of measurement. If you walk the bridge from MIT to Boston today, you can still see many helpful lines painted onto it, showing how many Smoots you've gone.
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I was once told by this old redneck-y Southern guy that he had a tumor the size of a half-grown squirrel. That's the oddest unit of measurement I've ever heard.
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They neglected to mention the shortest measurable unit of time... it is called The New York Second, and is defined as the interval between the traffic light in front of you turning green and the taxi-driver behind you honking his horn!
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Wish I had a dollar for every time I've seen distance measured in units of "football-fields".
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I just pictured them rolling him lengthwise, and imagined it would hurt.
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Texas is bigger than France, and works much better for area measurement than France. :)
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