this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Those are actually much saner: 10 cables in a nautical mile and 100 fathoms in a cable.
Both, nautical mile and metre are derived from earth's dimensions: One nautical mile is an arc ~~second~~ minute at the equator, i.e. its circumference is 360·60 NM = 21,600 NM. One metre originally was 1/40,000,000 of the circumference through the poles (or 1/10,000,000 of the distance from a pole to the equator).
Edit: Forgot three zeros in the definition of a metre.