Ripley's Believe It or Not by Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for November 07, 2015

We were well on our way to metric until Reagan put a stop to it.

And that have caused a lot of problems.

Thank God for that. Otherwise, Bradbury would have had to call his book Celsius 233.

I know all about the molasses spill. My workplace is a hop, skip, and jump from where it occurred.

“Be it Farenheit or Centigrade, he gives me fever—” Peggy Lee.

That’s like nearly 8 acres of molasses a foot deep.

Well, lay out a square acre. It can’t be done because an acre is not a square. It is defined as 1 chain by 1 furlong. You look it up. Much of the Southwest US is measured in varas, an old Spanish measurement. Oh, that one is easy, it’s the pace of a Spanish pony. Produce in the US is measured in bushels. Which is a volume measurement, but defined in pounds. A bushel of any grain does not weigh the same.Wheat, oats, corn, all have different weights. Then to complicate things, each state has it’s own weights, no standards. To the grief of long haul truckers who sometimes had no option but to shovel grain onto the roadway at highway patrol weigh stations. Oh, the moisture content has to be taken into account.In the last few years there have been several emergency airliner landings because of the mix up of fuel measurements, liters or gallons.During WWII aircraft parts made in Great Britain wouldn’t fit US made aircraft. The British inch wasn’t the same length as the American inch, along with other measurements. The US measurements are not based on the English system, but on the Winchester Cathedral measurements.In the metal working industry, all machines and measuring tools are marked and calibrated in decimal parts of an inch, tenths, hundreds, thousandths, etc. Thanks to Henry Ford. He watched a machinist converting a dimension from fractions to a decimal so he machine the part. Try to work from an aircraft drawing dimensioned in fractions.Quick, how long is 45/64ths of an inch? Aircraft manufacturers in the US actually dimensioned drawings with ridiculous fractions as that until the 1960s. Which weighs the most, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold? So, you still don’t know that they are weighed in different systems? Troy and avoirdupois. Not the same pounds. The coastlines of the United States are measured in a Coast Guard foot, which is not the same as other feet.Even in the US a yard is defined as the certain part of a meter.A ton is a ton, right? Well, no, we have short tons and long tons, different weight measurements of coal and ores.

I think it was the first Mars lander failed because NASA measured in the metric system and the contractor (Lockheed?) measured in inches.Metric vs English bolts and nuts, SAE threads, course or fine, Whittworth sizes, to the grief of buyers of English motor vehicles and machinery as late as the 1960s.And a hundredweight weighs a 110 pounds.Oh, we haven’t mentioned liquid measure. Liquid ounces, drops, minims, barrels, hogsheads and ad infinitum.The point is that even just the common measurementsm feet, inches, pints, yards, etc. are not understood and most people can’t use them anyway. Just ask someone how many yards in a 100 feet. or how long is 33 1/3 yards. Or how many pints in a gallon.Our money is in the metric system, so just forget all the fractions and different weights and measurements and pretend you are counting money, that is assuming you can make change.

Dang, what a rant. I’m going to take my meds now. Some are measured in grains and some in micrograms and some in minims……..Oh I didn’t even mention temperature…….

That molasses spill must not have been in January. It would have been slow enough for everyone to outrun it.

“Lethal” not “fatal”

Anyone who prefers the Imperial system over the metric system can go suck eggs. YOU try cutting wood using fractions.

" @Old Texan75

“Dang, what a rant. I’m going to take my meds now. Some are measured in grains and some in micrograms and some in minims……..Oh I didn’t even mention temperature…….”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please, Tex, don’t ever forget to take your meds. That may be what’s keeping! you brilliant!Prednisone (a prescription drug) is what’s doing it for me me. Well. maybe not the brilliance part. it was prescribed for me for debilitating, constant cough even preventing sleep at night. I was going down fast (and, no, I don’t smoke.)Believe me, its’ effect was a miracle. Not only did it stop the cough, it has given me vitality, an intensity to get my whole house organized and cleaned like it’s never been cleaned before (in 40 some-odd years), and an interest in everything I encounter. I can focus on details — everything I havereally never been good at before. I feel really alive, and sharper than I’ve ever been before. I call it the Pred-effect.

Of course, there is always a downside: It makes your skin paper-thin. It can make your skin tear away when you pull off a band-aid. It can thin your hair — a LOT! (been there, done that) But, after you wean off from it, the skin gets better and your hair thickens.

I know I’ll have to get off it- the sooner the better. Bet until my prescription is gone (about a week left now), I plan to take full advantage of it and organize everything I can get hold of.

I have a theory: ‘Energy begets energy.’ I have found my groove! If I can stay in this mode, I’ll be able to organize everything in the world before I check out. Then I’ll start on the other planets.

“Imagine the USA so proud of its being different from the UK and yet still clings to the old British system of measurement.”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I prefer Dollars and Cents (metric) toPounds and Pence (British )

Jus’ sayin’

NOTE TO READERS:Please ignore my first response To Tex. It was filled with errors and GoComics, in its valiant effort to comply with our wishes for a DELETE feature has chosen to not allow me to delete that one.

They even decided to publish that one before I was finished.

For those who just had to display their ignorance by making dumb cracks and comments about the molasses spill, here’s an idea: use the internet to learn something. I have lived in the Boston area for less than a year and had never heard of this tragedy, and when I read this item I almost couldn’t believe it was real. So what did I do? I googled it. I looked up legitimate sources and read about it and learned something so that if I did want to discuss it or comment on it, I could do so intelligently. It was indeed a tragedy in which 21 people died and around 150 were injured.

There are only two type of nations in the world – Those whose people have walked on the Moon and those who use the metric system.

Interesting about Sven of the long birthday. I’m lucky I make it from the restaurant back home, LOL! Plus I worked my last birthday…guess I could have requested a day off to go to Australia! LOl!

The “Metric” system will never be truly decimal until they do something about the 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours, (28, 29, 30 or 31 days), 12 months/(365 or 366 days) part of it for measuring TIME.