International yard and pound in the context of "Foot (unit)"

The mile, sometimes the international mile or statute mile to distinguish it from other miles, is a British imperial unit and United States customary unit of length; both are based on the older English unit of length equal to 5,280 English feet, or 1,760 yards. The statute mile was standardised as a unit of length between the Commonwealth of Nations and the United States by an international agreement in 1959, when the yard was formally redefined with respect to SI units as 0.9144 metres, making the mile exactly 1609.344 metres (1.609344 kilometres). For everyday use, five miles equates roughly to eight kilometres.

With qualifiers, mile is also used to describe or translate a wide range of units derived from or roughly equivalent to the Roman mile (roughly 1.48 km), such as the nautical mile (now 1.852 km exactly), the Italian mile (roughly 1.852 km), and the Chinese mile (now 500 m exactly). The Romans divided their mile into 5,000 pedes (lit. 'feet'), but the greater importance of furlongs in the Elizabethan-era England meant that the statute mile was made equivalent to 8 furlongs or 5,280 feet in 1593. This form of the mile then spread across the British Empire, some successor states of which continue to employ the mile. The US Geological Survey now employs the metre for official purposes, but legacy data from its 1927 geodetic datum has meant that a separate US survey mile (⁠6336/3937⁠ km) continues to see some use, although it was officially phased out in 2022. While most countries replaced the mile with the kilometre when switching to the International System of Units (SI), the international mile continues to be used in some countries, such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and a number of countries with fewer than one million inhabitants, most of which are UK or US territories or have close historical ties with the UK or US.
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United States customary units form a system of measurement units commonly used in the United States and most U.S. territories since being standardized and adopted in 1832. The United States customary system developed from English units that were in use in the British Empire before the U.S. became an independent country. The United Kingdom's system of measures evolved by 1824 to create the imperial system, with imperial units, which was officially adopted in 1826, changing the definitions of some of its units. Consequently, while many U.S. units are essentially similar to their imperial counterparts, there are noticeable differences between the systems.

The majority of U.S. customary units were redefined in terms of the meter and kilogram with the Mendenhall Order of 1893 and, in practice, for many years before. These definitions were refined by the international yard and pound agreement of 1959.

The yard (symbol: yd) is an English unit of length in both the British imperial and US customary systems of measurement equalling 3 feet or 36 inches. Since 1959 it has been by international agreement standardized as exactly 0.9144 meter. A distance of 1,760 yards is equal to 1 mile.

The theoretical US survey yard is very slightly longer.

Avoirdupois (/ˌævərdəˈpɔɪz, ˌævwɑːrdjuːˈpwɑː/; abbreviated avdp.) is a measurement system of weights that uses pounds and ounces as units. It was first commonly used in the 13th century AD and was updated in 1959.

In 1959, by international agreement among countries that used the pound as a unit of mass, the International Avoirdupois Pound was fixed at the modern definition of exactly 0.45359237 kilograms.. It remains the everyday system of weights used in the United States, and is still used, in varying degrees, in everyday life in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and some other former British colonies, despite their official adoption of the metric system.

The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in both the British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement. Various definitions have been used; the most common today is the international avoirdupois pound, which is legally defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms, and which is divided into 16 avoirdupois ounces. The international standard symbol for the avoirdupois pound is lb; an alternative symbol (when there might otherwise be a risk of confusion with the pound-force) is lb_m (for most pound definitions), # (chiefly in the U.S.), and ℔ or ″̶ (specifically for the apothecaries' pound).

The unit is descended from the Roman libra (hence the symbol lb, descended from the scribal abbreviation, ℔). The English word pound comes from the Roman libra pondo ('the weight measured in libra'), and is cognate with, among others, German Pfund, Dutch pond, and Swedish pund. These units are now designated as historical and are no longer in common usage, being replaced by the metric system.