So now I'm a hectare...

[Robert_Brenchley]

But Waterloo wouldn't have happened if Napoleon hadn't squandered the best part of his army in Russia. His great mistake was to get embroiled in major wars at both ends of his empire at once. Even with his armies badly weakened, he almost pulled it off.

[Robert_Brenchley]

[Marymary]

I'm on 99 posts & want to see what happens when I get to 100.!!!!!!!

[Marymary]

Ooooooooooooooh another star & a half an acre.  How many to the next promotion?  Like working at McDonald's - maybe not. ::)

[bennettsleg]

Can I be a size 12 please?

[Ceratonia]

But why do the poor hectares have to be defined on the basis of measurements which Napoleon and his scientists (being French) got wrong in the first place. 

To be fair, they got it amazingly accurate by the standards of the time - the distance from equator to pole was supposed to be 10 000km and it's actually 10 002km.

The good old anglo-saxon mile comes from the roman army's 'mille passum' (thousand steps) - it was supposed to be a thousand double-steps for the legionnaires. I think an acre was related to the area of land which a single ox could plough in a day?

[Robert_Brenchley]

That's right, and talking of early measurements, a guy called Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the Earth some time in the Second Century BC, and got to within about 1% of the true value. So much for the idea that the ancients thought the Earth was flat!