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The US uses the US customary system, not Imperial. [0] US customary and Imperial share some units, and, confusingly, share even more unit names, but they are different systems.

[0] well, really, it uses metric with a redefined version of the old US customary system layered over it to prevent people from noticing, but...

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We've made an inconsistent and confusing system even more inconsistent and confusing. How apropos!

Hey, don't blame us for Britain going stone-mad after the Revolution and redefining all of their units in crazy ways. We weren't a part of it.

Now, choosing wine gallons as our standard gallon, that might deserve a little blame.

That's a fairly long-standing pre-metric tradition.

In Sweden, 1 foot was around 28.96cm (in modern dimensions), whilst 1 foot in Amsterdam was 28.31cm.

On such differences (OK, and a few other contributing factors) a ship was sunk.

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