Or to put it another way: a nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude and 60 nautical miles equals one degree of latitude. I've seen many people become

Or to put it another way: a nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude and 60 nautical miles equals one degree of latitude. I've seen many people become amazed when it's explained to them that a nautical mile is not just an archaic, arbitrary unit of measure, like a hogshead or furlong. Part Two of this explanation is to tell them that the metric system unit of distance, the meter, was also originally based on the earth's size. Ten million meters (or 10,000 km) is the distance from the equator to one of the poles.