Mile (mi)

Standardised to exactly 5,280 feet by the English Parliament in 1593.

The statute mile was fixed at 5,280 feet by Parliament in 1593, and the awkward figure has a tidy reason behind it: Parliament chose to make the mile eight furlongs rather than a round number of feet, so English farmers could keep their field measurements intact. Eight times 660 gives 5,280, and the Roman mile of a thousand paces, from which the name descends, was rather shorter at about 4,860. Three miles were in use across these islands. The English statute mile of 1,760 yards; the Scots mile of roughly 1,976, abolished by the Parliament of Scotland in 1685; and the Irish mile of 2,240, built on a seven-yard perch and appearing on Ordnance Survey mapping into the nineteenth century. A journey described in one and walked in another produced a good deal of complaint, and at least one proverb.