posted in Asklemmy
Why is the USA the only country who doesn’t use the metric system?
Originally it was because the ship carrying the official metric measures from France to the US in 1793 was captured by pirates. More recently it’s because there was a near-revolt when Jimmy Carter tried to reintroduce it in the 1970s in an attempt to make the US even slightly less regressive.
Replying to @artifex@piefed.zip
That reminds me of a road in AZ that had signage in KM when I was a kid. I guess it was a part of this program and it never got changed back? It was always a mindfuck suddenly seeing kms instead of miles on road trips through the area.
There was a stretch of the Florida coast that had metric in the late 90s and early 2000s, but people kept stealing the speed limit signs. They also had a problem with people misunderstanding 100kph (about 60mph) and doing 100mph instead.
Replying to @artifex@piefed.zip
“Misunderstanding”. They just wanted to speed
Replying to @yenahmik@lemmy.world
It’s still there
Replying to @yenahmik@lemmy.world
I’m assuming 2L soda bottles are also a remnant of this era.
Replying to @artifex@piefed.zip
Yeah. The attempt was made to convert everything to metric for official government documents, but that just meant most businesses paid people to convert it back for their use.