Cruising Aquitaine
In reply to Meir Galinski (msg # 12):
"I thought you knew about navigation? Nautical miles is based on the circumference of the planet, and as this planet is approximately the same diameter as earth, 1 nautical mile is equivalent to one minute of longitude at the equator. This makes reading charts so much easier, and navigating much more logical. At one knot, you travel 1 nautical mile in one hour. So it becomes very easy to understand, and this, by the way, is not an imperial unit, but actually a metric unit used for navigation. As a derived SI unit, one nautical mile is 1,852 metres is metric, as there was an old Imperial nautical mile, but it was abandoned before the turn of the 2nd millenia."
[OOC: the old Imperial Nautical Mile, or Admiralty measured mile, was abandoned even by the United States in 1970, probably because maritime charts needed to be consistent worldwide and such details were decided my the IMO, (International Maritime Organization) not the client states such as US and Australia, and most other nations!]