The mile is a distance unit used in several English-speaking countries. Its length equals exactly 1.6093 kilometers.
The mile has been around for many centuries and its length varied historically. In the Roman Empire the unit was used to measure the distance traversed by 1,000 paces (“mille passus”). In the British Empire it served as a distance measure for horse races.
The international mile was only standardized in 1959. Its length equals exactly 1,609.344 meters and consists of 1,760 yards or 5,280 feet. Apart from the international mile, the nautical mile is another mile unit still in use today.
| Miles | |
|---|---|
| Marathon | 26.2 |
| Race track "Mille Miglia" | 1,000.0 |
| Earth radius | 3,963.2 |
| Earth circumference | 24,901.6 |
| Distance earth ↔ moon | 238,855.1 |
| Distance earth ↔ sun | 92,953,265.4 |