On The British: - Hot and Cold -

[Steve]

Perhaps our resident expert can confirm or deny this assertion.

I've been told that the British buy their gasoline (and similar fuel) by the Liter, but they measure its consumption in Miles Per Gallon. Though, I'm not sure what size their gallons are. 

However, I recently learned from Stephen Fry (yes, that Stephen Fry) that the British measure warm weather in Fahrenheit, but cold weather in Celcius. A warm summer's day is 85°F to 90°F, but a cold winter's day is -10°C. Though were I'm from -10°C is balmy. 

Moving back to Gallons, it is odd so much of the Imperial measurement carried over to the USA, but for some odd reason, we ended up with a different sized Gallon. 

Before Metric, was the Imperial Gallon the Euro standard, or was it unique to the UK? Just curious on this point.

On the issue of Gallons, from Wikipedia -

The imperial (UK) gallon was legally defined as 4.54609 Liters. 

Then the variation between USA Wet Gallons and Dry Gallons -

The US liquid gallon is legally defined as 231 cubic inches,[4] and is equal to exactly 3.785411784 litres or about 0.133680555 cubic feet. This is the most common definition of a gallon in the United States. The US fluid ounce is defined as 1⁄128 of a US gallon.

The US dry gallon is one-eighth of a US Winchester bushel of 2150.42 cubic inches, thus it is equal to exactly 268.8025 cubic inches or 4.40488377086 Liters. You don't see Dry Gallons used that much, dry measurement jump from dry quarts up to Pecks and skip Gallons. 

It gets even more confusing as the UK ounce is actually 4% less than the USA ounce, but the UK Gallon is bigger. So, if I remember right, it is 19 UK ounces to a US pint. ...or something like that. 

Still ... summer and winter temperatures? Any truth to that? 

Steve/bboyminn