No the miles would have been closer to 3 if we had used the old Irish miles. Somerville discusses the differences in her book of travels written in 1985? Good read, shows you how far we have progressed in 100 years.
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From: "MightyChimp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [USMA:29621] RE: Prime Suspect tweaked for U.S. audience?
Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 08:55:06 -0400
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An AP article appeared in Today's newspaper entitled:
Death toll in N. Korea blast set at 154 by Christopher Bodeen
Two paragraphs (excerpts) stick out:
The explosion destroyed buildings in a radius of hundreds of yards, ripped the roofs of others and broke windows up to 2� miles out, aid officials said.
At a three-story primary school about 300 yards from the station, the roof was ripped away and the top floor collapsed, he said.
The use of the unit yards is used often in the US press as a transliteration (not a conversion) of metres. Thus if the report had originated using FFU, the distances would have been in feet as you note for US usage. The fact that yards are used is proof positive the originating units were metres. The 2� miles is actually a real 4 km.
Euric
> > Note that in non-metric references, British convention is to use yards > rather than feet for distances between about 5 yards and half a mile. I > understand that US convention is to use feet for those distances. I imagine > that few British people would have know what distance is meant by 600 feet, > but most would score better when told about 200 yards or 200 metres.
John Nichols BE, Ph.D. (Newcastle), MIE (Aust), Chartered Professional Engineer
Assistant Professor
Texas A&M University, Department of Construction Science
Langford AC Rm: A414 MD 3137, College Station, TX 77843-3137
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
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