I don't think that's relevant for Register units. Clearly there's a standard brontosaurus somewhere, for instance, otherwise how could we have the conversion table? However, sorry, I was wrong about the football pitch, at least as a unit of area, equal to 194.89nWa per the original article: https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/2007/08/24/so-whats-the-...
Yes, in USA the bits are in fractions and stuff you purchase will have instructions like, drill 3/8 hole for a wall anchor, or 2+1/4 hole for a door-bolt set.
The American thousands of pounds thing is even more weird than that: I buy gravel from the gravel pit. They weigh my truck and dump trailer in lbs and then charge me per ton. Everyone talks about tons: e.g. I'd call a dump truck operator and ask him to deliver 18 tons of rock, not 36,000lbs. But the weighbridge and road signs and regulations about vehicle and axle weight are always in lbs. If you only read things and never talked to other people you'd never know tons existed.
I wonder if using pounds exclusively stems from a time when the word ton was potentially ambiguous. In both British Imperial and US Customary one ton means 20 hundredweight (20 cwt) but the hundredweight differs between the two countries, 112 lb in Imperial, 100 lb in US Customary resulting in the US Customary ton being the short ton of 2 000 lb and the Imperial ton being the long ton of 2 240 lb.
This is an is-ought inference. Americans have not been given an option and use the units they're provided with, which is a frustrating mix of everything depending on context.
And two more were supposed to come from Aliexpress but they got stopped at customs because of asbestos contamination. That's why there's that gap on the southwest side.
The word for this sort of structure is apparently a menhir: ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menhir. The article calls it the tallest in the UK but its Wikipedia page calls it the second-tallest. This is the actual tallest, interestingly also in Yorkshire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudston_Monolith.
Ken Follett (of "Pillars of the Earth" fame) wrote a terrific semi-historical* novel called "Circle of Days" that portrays a vivid picture of the people and circumstances that could've led to the creation of Stonehenge.
*"semi" qualifier bc there's so little known for sure -- but it's at least plausible, and his extensive research doesn't contradict things that can be verified.
I’m beginning to conclude that about 47% of all ancient activities in England consisted solely of either moving comically huge rocks around, or attempting to convince the remaining 53% to do their fair share.
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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 39.9 ms ] threadhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_pitch
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)
We have a dumb system here in New Zealand. Most people seem to know their height in feet/inches and weight in kilograms.
[0] https://hgvlgvtraining.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/weig...
[1] https://freesvg.org/img/B13a.png
Using only lb avoids confusion.
Nobody seems to like it this way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_ton
> he long ton,[1] also known as the imperial ton, displacement ton,[1][2] or British ton,[3] is a measurement unit equal to 2,240 pounds
Not a lot of people know that.
Without ever telling *how" they were moved of course, that would give out too much
https://youtu.be/YpNuh-J5IgE
*"semi" qualifier bc there's so little known for sure -- but it's at least plausible, and his extensive research doesn't contradict things that can be verified.