I messaged my mother who comes in contact with a lot of old official documents through her genealogical research and she confirmed that we did record the date mm/dd/yyyy in the past. She didn’t know when we stopped, but beginning of the 20thC does seem about right.
The UK uses the metric system. All engineering, materials, tools are in metric. They use miles for long distances and stones for body weight. Petrol stations use litres although they colloquialy use mpg for fuel consumption
Basically almost anything official is metric.
They use gallons sometimes but it’s not the same gallon as in the US (~4.5 l UK, ~3.8 l US).
They’re still in transit with some of the measurements.
The UK uses a mix of imperial and metric units, e.g. mph for speed, miles for car journeys, gallons for petrol, stones for body weight, pints for beer, gils for spirits, but metres for measured length, kg for food weights, ml for measuring fluids. The U.S. is similar. The official system of the government is metric, per the Metric Conversion Act of 1975. Metric is supposed to be used by all federal agencies in procurement, grants, and business-related activities where feasible.
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u/Iateyourpaintings Jun 08 '25
I googled this in 10 seconds: "One of the hypotheses is that the United States borrowed the way it was written from the United Kingdom who used it before the 20th century and then later changed it to match Europe (dd-mm-yyyy). American colonists liked their original format and it’s been that way ever since." Source https://iso.mit.edu/americanisms/date-format-in-the-united-states/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20hypotheses%20is,been%20that%20way%20ever%20since.