When former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee announced he was joining the 2016 Democratic primary race, some people scratched their heads when he said switching to the metric system would be one of ...

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 ...

I was at the supermarket recently when I took note of something my eyes had passed thousands of times before. The cans of my favorite sodas were 12 ounces, while the bottles were 2 liters. It caught ...

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 ...

May is a month full of celebrations—everything from May Day and Cinco de Mayo to Mother’s Day and Memorial Day. Largely forgotten in the cornucopia of May celebrations, however, is National Metric ...

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. ...

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 ...

On April 19, 1973, Wilson Riles, superintendent of public instruction for California. called to announce that beginning in 1976 the metric system would be taught in California. The reaction from the ...