UNITS OF MEASURE

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge of it is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.”
William Thompson, Lord Kelvin

How Many? A Dictionary of Units of Measurement
Russell Rowlett, director of the Center for Mathematics and Science Education at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, has posted this information on unusual units of measure on the Internet to help students and to satisfy his curiosity about building a Web site. The dictionary covers the gamut, from land measurements to grit sizes to intervals of time. Visitors can discern the meaning of a salmanazar, "a large wine bottle holding about 9 liters, 12 times the volume of a regular bottle," or learn why a bridge in Boston is measured in smoots.
http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/