December 23, 2025, marks the 50th anniversary of the Metric Conversion Act, designed to bring US weights and measures in line with the rest of the world. The United States is one of the last holdouts ...

Expats and tourists from the United States come to Costa Rica with a handicap. While most of the rest of the world, including Costa Rica, is using the metric system, the U.S., despite several efforts ...

So much for American exceptionalism: Democratic presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee used his campaign announcement Wednesday to urge the U.S. to switch to the metric system of weights and measures. ...

America’s reluctance to convert to the metric system was once famously lampooned by television’s longest-running animated sitcom, "The Simpsons," in an episode from way back in the Nineties. During a ...

Canadians measure their height in feet and inches but record distances in kilometers, express the air temperature in degrees ...

When Sally Mitchell, a science teacher at East Syracuse Minoa Central High in Syracuse, New York, spoke to a group of students at the recent U.S. Department of Energy National Science Bowl, she ...

Atlas Obscura on Slate is a blog about the world’s hidden wonders. Like us on Facebook and Tumblr, or follow us on Twitter. For better or worse, the United States remains one of only three countries ...

As president of the U.S. Metric Association, Donald Hillger would like to think that his non-profit advocacy group had something to do with presidential candidate Lincoln Chafee's call for America to ...

The U.S. Metric Program may be the loneliest office in Washington. Located about 30 minutes from the White House, its headquarters is in the much larger—and better funded—“measurement standards ...