Feet are Measured in Barleycorns

Ah, the imperial system: don't you just love it? Turns out our feet are still measured in an Anglo-Saxon measurement equating to (roughly) a third of an inch. But hang about, you might say: I've got size nine feet, but my feet aren't 9 x 1/3 inch = 3 inches long. Well, as with everything relating to the imperial system of measurement, it's not that simple. See, Anglo-Saxons had obviously never seen a foot larger than 13 inches. So that they used as their base measurement - as size 13. From there they worked backwards, taking 1 barleycorn (1/3 inch) off for size 12, 2 barleycorns off for size 11, and so forth.

Helpfully, Wikipedia has supplied a chart showing how all those cra-zee imperial measurements fit together.

So there's 20 twips in a point, 6 points in a line, 1 line in a poppyseed, 4 poppyseeds (of course!) in a barleycorn, 3 barleycorns in an inch, 2 inches in a stick, 2 sticks in a hand, and 3 hands in a foot.

You can't argue with that.

Although it seems crazy to modern, SI-calibrated minds, I like the humanity of the imperial system. For instance a league is 3 miles, becuase they reckoned that's how far you could walk in an hour. Similarly a cubit is the length (roughly) from your fingertips to your elbow, and a yard from your fingertips to the middle of your body, and a fathom from outstretched fingertips to outstretched fingertips (18 inches, 3 feet and 6 feet respectively).