Friday, April 12, 2024

The rabbit hole of measurements

From a list of humorous units of measurement on Wikipedia

Helen (beauty)
Helen of Troy (from the Iliad) is widely known as the face that launched a thousand ships.
Thus, 1 millihelen is the amount of beauty needed to launch a single ship.
Other derived units such as the negative helen (the power to beach ships) have also been described.

Bee's dick
An Australian term for a very small distance, as in,
"He missed crashing into the truck by a bee’s dick."
It is derived from the presumed small size of a male bee's penis. 

Lots more here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_measurement