why is a mile 5280 feet instead of 5000 feet?

Answer 1

info from www.bookrags.com/Mile

The statute mile has it origins in Roman times where a measure of a thousand paces, mille passum, was used for large distances. For the Romans, a pace was the distance between the same foot touching the ground—that is the distance covered in two steps. The pace was taken as being equal to five Roman feet, a length that historians have calculated to be 11.65 inches.

The study of Anglo-Saxon texts reveals that the early English used a measure for long distances called a mil (plural: mila), which was also equal to 5,000 feet. However, the foot used by the Saxons was measured by using an adult's actual foot, and so was about 80 percent of the length of the Roman foot.

Although the confusion between Roman and Saxon feet was resolved by the Statute for Measuring Land of 1305, making the foot close to our modern measure, this did not get translated into resolving the conflict between the two miles for measuring long distances. It was nearly 200 years later, in 1593, that Elizabeth I signed into law a statute titled An Acte againste newe Buyldinges. The act prohibited any new construction within three miles of the gates of the City of London. In this statute the mile was declared to be 8 furlongs, a furlong being 40 rods, which was itself 16½ feet long. Thus the statute mile was a total of 5,280 feet, the length it is today.

Answer 2

A "mile" was origininally defined as the distance that a Roman soldier could walk in 1,000 paces (a "pace" being one step with the right foot followed by one step with the left foot). This is why the word "mile" comes from the same root as the Latin word for "thousand" ("mille").

This, of course, wasn't a very precise definition, especially because different people have paces of different lengths. But it was fairly useful for estimating approximately how many steps your army would have to take to get from A to B.

It was given a more precise definition in the 16th century. People noticed that 1,000 paces was pretty close to 8 furlongs, so Queen Elizabeth created a statute that defined the mile (the "statute mile") as exactly 8 furlongs. According to Wikipedia:

"The reason for these rather irregular numbers is that 5280 feet is made up of eight furlongs (the length generally that a furrow was plowed before the horses were turned, furlong = furrow-long). In turn a furlong is 10 chains (a surveyor's chain, used as such until laser rangefinders took over); a chain is 22 yards and a yard is three feet, making up 5280 ft."

Answer 3

5280 Feet

Answer 4

A mile was 1000 paces for Roman soldiers (2000 steps) - the word root is the same as mille in Italian or French. A foot was probably based on the length of someone's foot. The English units system isn't set up to have nice conversion factors like the metric system, so inconvenient conversions just resulted, since the way the different units were set up was different.

Answer 5

BECAUSE 5280 ft is more accurate than 5000 feet.

Answer 6

You can't round feet because the more miles you go the more feet you go and that would eventually make a huge difference in distance.

Answer 7

Feet In Amile

Answer 8

A mile is 5,280 feet. As far as I know, that's just how it is.

Answer 9

Because for some stupid reason we don't use the metric system. Even numbers... that's too easy to remember. =oP

Answer 10

Because a mile is 1760 yards, duh!