Earth's circumference mile in the seventeenth century and the metre in the eighteenth. Earth's polar circumference is almost exactly 40,000 km because the metre was originally calibrated on this measurement (1/10-millionth of the distance between the poles and the equator), which is almost exactly 21,600 nautical miles (being defined as one minute of a degree – i.e. 360 multiplied by 60). It has been described as "the single most important measurement" of the Earth, assuming the Earth to be a sphere (the Earth is an technically an ellipsoid, albeit with just 0.3% flattening). Earth's circumference lines are the foundation of the coordinate
Grain (unit) Grain (unit) A grain is a unit of measurement of mass, and in the troy weight, avoirdupois, and Apothecaries' system, equal to exactly . It is nominally based upon the mass of a single virtual ideal seed of a cereal. From the Bronze Age into the Renaissance the average masses of wheat and barley grains were part of the legal definitions of units of mass. Rather, expressions such as "thirty-two grains of wheat, taken from the middle of the ear" appear to have been ritualistic formulas, essentially the premodern equivalent of legal boilerplate. Another source states that it was defined