To convert feet to miles (ft to mi), multiply by 0.00018939. 1 foot equals 0.00018939 mi, about 44% of a tennis racket.
| feet | miles |
|---|---|
| 1 foot | 0.00018939 mi |
| 2 feet | 0.00037879 mi |
| 5 feet | 0.00094697 mi |
| 10 feet | 0.0018939 mi |
| 25 feet | 0.0047348 mi |
| 50 feet | 0.0094697 mi |
| 100 feet | 0.018939 mi |
| 250 feet | 0.047348 mi |
| 500 feet | 0.094697 mi |
| 1000 feet | 0.18939 mi |
Definition: 12 inches, or exactly 0.3048 meters.
History: The foot traces back to the Roman "pes," and different versions of it were used across Greek, Roman, English, Chinese, and French systems, each a slightly different length depending on who was measuring. English legend credits King Henry I with standardizing it in the 12th century using his own foot as the template - likely a booted foot, since people (and their footwear) tended to run smaller back then. It took until 1959 for the US, UK, and four other countries to finally agree on one exact, shared definition.
Current use: Building and construction measurements, room dimensions, and aircraft altitude are still commonly given in feet, even in countries that otherwise use metric.
Definition: A mile is 5,280 feet, or exactly 1,609.344 meters.
History: It started as the Roman "mille passus" - literally a thousand paces, where a pace was a Roman soldier's double-step, about 5 Roman feet. That put the original Roman mile at 5,000 feet. Centuries later, English farmers were measuring land in furlongs (660 feet, the length of a furrow before an ox needed a rest), and in 1593 Queen Elizabeth I's Parliament decided a mile should equal exactly 8 furlongs - bumping the mile from 5,000 feet to 5,280, the number that's stuck ever since.
Current use: The US, UK, and a handful of other countries still measure road distances in miles. Aviation and shipping use a different mile entirely - the nautical mile, based on the Earth's circumference, not Roman soldiers' footsteps.