The Mirror article contained a nice list of costly errors due to mixing up Imperial and metric measures. Some I already knew about, but others were new to me. Here there are if you didn't happen top read the article.
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<x-tad-smaller>WHOOPS, IT'S METRIC MAYHEM
BRAIN surgeon Donald Campbell, 55, survived crashing a light plane into a house after incorrectly working out how much fuel he should put into the plane. He was flying a hired Piper Seneca into Shoreham airport near Brighton on April 2, 2001, having miscalculated the conversion from US gallons to litres when fuelling. No one was hurt.
THE most famous example of a conversion disaster cost Nasa �78million in 1999. Its Mars Climate Orbiter disintegrated in the planet's atmosphere after a controller confused metric and imperial - and manoeuvred it with four times the strength necessary.
The acceleration data submitted by the craft's maker, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, was in pounds but Nasa had assumed the figures were metric newtons.
THE luxurious Cipriani Hotel in Venice, enjoyed by Princess Diana, has a magnificent swimming pool.
But it would not have been quite so magnificent - or big - if the builders had read the plans correctly.
They misinterpreted the British architect's markings, more than trebling its size from 33 feet to 33 metres.
AIR Canada Flight 143 was forced to glide 22 miles after it ran out of fuel.
The Boeing 767 was flying from Montreal to Edmonton on July 23, 1983, when it ran dry. This particular plane was the first all-metric plane in the fleet - and the first with fuel requirements stated in kilograms, not pounds.
The crew and mechanics did not take this into account, leaving the plane 15,000 litres light of fuel.
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