364.4 smoots +/- 1 ear
~ The Harvard Bridge
While crossing the Harvard bridge from Cambridge to Boston, my companion and I came across a little plaque informing us that the bridge was 364.4 smoots +/- 1 ear in length. As the story goes, in October 1958, Oliver Reed Smoot and his fraternity brothers from MIT used Ollie's body to measure the length of the Harvard bridge. This left me in awe - as well as wondering the answer to today's question: how long is a smoot?
A: According to Google's calculator, 1 smoot is the equivalent of 1.7018 meters (approximately 5 feet 7 inches) which was Oliver's height at the time of measurement.
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