Talk:Mile

Attempts to Correlate

One source implies that all miles are 8 stadia, and that all stadia are 600 of their national foot. But the English mile of 5280 feet is exactly 8 of 660 English feet; the Roman mile of 5000 Roman feet is exactly 8 of 625 feet. Greek stadia come in three forms and yet the metric conversion doesn't explain their own correlation to their own units. There is definately error because how does 8 Italian stadia equal more meters than the English mile requiring 5000 Roman feet to be larger than the 5280 English feet and yet publish a Roman foot as 11.65 English inches? Another publication states the mistake of Columbus using 20,400 Italian miles as Earth's circumference instead of 20,400 Arabic miles of which here this article says Arabic mile is 1 minute of latitude thus 360x 60 min 21,600 min to equal 21,600 miles which is 1200 miles longer circumference than the other source. Now it would make more sense that a degree would be 60 Arabic miles not 56.6 Arabic miles. But is sense enough proof? Earth's degree of latitude is very close to 69 English miles which could be the unit spaces between 70 points, thus logic.

It would seem to me that if mile means 1000 (mil) then they started with the largest unit of Earth circumference as 24 hours each 1000 miles thus 24,000 miles. Unforunately, these 1000 miles of one hour (60 minutes of time) are 15 degrees of longitude (900 minutes of arc), and thus divides these 900 minutes of arc to be 1.1111 mile per minute of arc, or the more exact 0.9 minute of arc for every mile. Until, Earth was proven more than 24,000 miles. So if the English mile was an atrempt to claim exact 1000s of miles for Earth, this is why it varies from the 5000-foot Roman mile which you would think evolved from 5 miles each mile as 1000 feet. or was there some unit that could be 1000 of 5 Roman feet? Special:Contributions/75.86.172.174|75.86.172.174]] (talk) 22:00, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Until Elizabeth 1 changed the length of the furlong from the Romans stadium of 625 Roman feet of 296 mm to 660 ft English feet increasing the Roman milliare of 8 x 625 pes or 5000 pes to 5280 feet, so that following the discoveries of Galileo in 1581 regarding the period of the pendulum there would be twice as many seconds in a century as inches in the circumference of the earth at the equator, The Greek stadion, the Roman stadium and the English furlong were all 185 meters long making the Greeks (800 orquia) or fathoms = the Roman Milliare (1000 passus)or paces = the English Mile, all at 111 km or 75 Roman miles to a degree In the case of the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians for more than two millenia from c 450 BC to 1593 AD and in the case of Europe west of the Rhine from the time of Caesar.

Where each degree is 111 km and there are 360 degrees the circumference of the earth at the equator is 39960 km

Where each degree is 69.1742... miles or 365240 feet the circumference of the earth at the equator is 24902.72... mi

The Egyptian value was 110.5 km and the Mesopotamian value was similar as they used the same length foot.

Whats messing the above conjectures up is not having the comparable table of units which used to exist here 142.0.102.20 (talk) 16:56, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

It is a simplier habbit of Swedish miles

The following: "In Norway and Sweden, a mil is a unit of length equal to 10 kilometres and commonly used in everyday language. However in more formal situations, such as on road signs and when there is risk of confusion with English miles, kilometres are used instead." should be replaced by this: "In Norway and Sweden, a mil is a unit of length equal to 10 kilometres and commonly used in everyday language. However in all formal situations, such as on road signs and law, kilometres are used. For instance road signs are read in km (like 348 km) and the last digit rounded up and always expressed in common talk always in miles (like 35 miles!)."

K is temperature and not distance

When Eurosport by Giro d'Itala says, "Oh they have 10K left" it is very very cold, and the bikes will crack and the bikers die, quick. It is really very bad language of an international Tv-channel and they should really take some internal talks about it.

Nope. Welcome to English. — LlywelynII 06:01, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Length of Roman mile

The article on Pace (unit) gives the length of a pace (two steps) as 58.1 inches. This article on the mile says a Roman mile is 1000 paces (ie 2000 steps) so therefore a Roman mile was 0.91698 of an Imperial mile. But the Imperial units article says that there are two paces for every step rather than the two steps for every pace that this article gives, so they are inconsistent. 2.101.12.80 (talk) 15:08, 29 June 2014 (UTC) Not inconsistent. one is WRONG. Or do we have 4 pints in a quart and 2 quarts in a gallon because people don't know quart and quarter means 4? Maybe these Romans were amputees working at IHOP. I would like to know why there is such sensitive issue at correcting other's mistakes, ie if you dont like K for kilometer because it is a temp for Kelvin then change it in the article to km. Many people are confused with a single m for meter when the m could be mile (mi); why not me. Or how about caps versus small 1km = 1000m not 1000M. (?) Face it no standard system cause cross-confusion that results in wasted money on Mars landers crashing, while forced standards are for many another slavery. Does it matter Columbus thought he was in China! 75.86.172.174 (talk) 22:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect and untrustworthy reference in preamble

The preamble, third paragraph, makes the claim:

the international mile continues to be used in some countries such as [...] the United Kingdom[3]

The footnote [3] refers to an opinion piece from the UK Metric Association detailing cherrypicked objections to continued use of MPH has a unit of speed. The opinion piece does not back up the assertion that the UK uses the International Mile, (nor does is any claim made that the mile used in the UK is defined in terms of metric units). I suggest the link is removed altogether, to be substituted with a link to some suitable legal decision detailing the UK's definition of a mile. --Rfsmit (talk) 20:52, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR

This edit established the use of the page as British English, which should kindly be maintained pending a new consensus. Given that the UK has metricised itself, however, I do feel there should be a new consensus to use American English or at least a compromise that we use the abbreviated form (k)m instead of the spelling (kilo)metre or meter. — LlywelynII 06:00, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

WP:USEENGLISH

In other news, miglio isn't different from the Italian mile. What was meant was (one kind of) the Sicilian mile as opposed to the Italian mile, both of which were called miglio/a in Italian. One way to clean that up is to remember that the English term should come first and the foreign-language term should be the one in italics and parentheses. — LlywelynII 06:04, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

The common singular Latin form was mille passus; unusually, the partitive genitive milia passuum seems to be much more common for the plural. We should include the other major forms here since there isn't a separate article for them but we should use the most common form in our running text. Uncommon forms can go to Wiktionary if we have entries to link to with {{linktext}}.

Meanwhile, the terms Arab mile, Arabic mile, and Arabian mile are all fairly common in English but the MOST COMMON name is currently "Arabic mile" and we should just use that here, leaving the laundry list for its special article since it has one. (Separately, it also suits the fact that the units page is at "Ancient Arabic units of measurement".) — LlywelynII 06:23, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

London milestone

If it's really thought confusing to label a milestone patently showing the distance from Westminster to London as

"a Westminster milestone showing the distance... to London"

then just replace the image with something else. I understand there's a metropolitan London that ate both Westminster and the City but It makes no sense whatsoever to describe it as a "London milestone" showing the distance to itself. Now, that said, I find the correct caption perfectly straightforward and even helpful, given that it links directly to the City of London article rather than the London area one. — LlywelynII 10:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Hyde Park Corner is not in the City of London. The caption is clearer now. --TBM10 (talk) 10:35, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

It's fine if the milestone is incorrect and it's not actually the distance to the City of London. It's wonderful to fix the link to a more direct page. It is NOT acceptable AT ALL to say that a London milestone is pointing at itself. You're bumping up against WP:3RR so either let it alone or as suggested just find a better image to use here as a compromise measure. Surely there has to be something more attractive and historically notable. Did London have a zero-mile marker? Paris? — LlywelynII 11:58, 12 April 2015 (UTC)