Mile mile to diverge. Owing to the importance of the surveyor's rod in deeds and surveying undertaken under Henry VIII, decreasing the length of the rod by would have amounted to a significant tax increase. Parliament instead opted to maintain the mile of 8 furlongs (which were derived from the rod) and to increase the number of feet per mile from the old Roman value. The applicable passage of the statute reads: "A Mile shall contain eight Furlongs, every Furlong forty Poles, and every Pole shall contain sixteen Foot and half." The statute mile therefore contained 5,280 feet or 1,760 yards.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? The practical lesson to be drawn from the argument is not to use words like "there" in a loose, unscientific way, without specifying whether you mean "located there" or "occupying space there." In the humoristic magazine "Annals of Improbable Research", Anders Sandberg has presented a calculation based on theories of information physics and quantum gravity, establishing an upper bound of 8.6766×10 angels. Comparing medieval superstition and modern science, George Bernard Shaw wrote in the introduction to the play "Saint Joan" that "The medieval doctors of divinity who did not pretend to settle how many angels could dance on the point