From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,alt.health,misc.health.alternative
Subject: Re: Latest Dairy coverup
Date: 6 Jun 2005 20:27:45 -0700
Message-ID: <1118114865.526872.263500@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

>>Never mind the nope. Do the research and find out the USanians created their
own measurement system out of ignorance and illiteracy.
The whole world had a gallon that weighed 10 pounds except the US. <<


COMMENT:

Ignorance of history, here.

Basically, the Brits of the 18th century had two kinds of gallons, the
ale-gallon and the wine-gallon. You used one for ale (which they still
do) and the other (about 20% smaller) for wine (which they also still
do). You got to chose which you used for plain water. In the US, we
happened to chose the British wine-gallon for water (and milk), before
such things were standardized. That's it.

SBH

From: Steve Harris <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.med.nutrition,alt.health,misc.health.alternative
Subject: Re: Latest Dairy coverup
Date: 6 Jun 2005 20:49:35 -0700
Message-ID: <1118116175.859650.278630@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>

Further comment:

I might add that the Brits didn't standardize every water and milk
gallon to their ale-gallon (the so called imperial system) until 1826.
But the American revolution had already happened by then, and the
Britis were so, well, *imperial* about their imperial system that the
Americans were fed up and continued to use Queen Ann's wine-gallon as
the US gallon (which it later standarized for itself).

As for the Brits, they would like to have standardized wine to the
imperial gallon, too, but that would have meant a lot of lost excise
revenues. So even the Brits standardized a smaller wine-gallon under
the imperial system, and they use it for wine-import taxes, to this
day. Whether it looks "ignorant" or not.

SBH