Nautical Miles facts

While investigating facts about Nautical Miles To Km and Nautical Miles Calculator, I found out little known, but curios details like:

In 2008 a dog named Sophie Tucker survived 4 months lost at sea off the coast of Australia. She fell overboard while sailing in bad weather with her owners. She then swam 5 nautical miles in stormy, shark-infested waters, to an island where she survived for 16 weeks by hunting wild goats.

how many miles in a nautical mile?

In 2013 an abandoned Russian cruise ship began drifting through international waters. It was last seen 1,300 nautical miles off the coast of Ireland and is yet to be found.

What are nautical miles?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what does nautical miles mean. Here are 22 of the best facts about Nautical Miles To Kilometers and Nautical Miles Vs Miles I managed to collect.

what's nautical miles per hour?

1. The Peanut Hole, an area of neutral international waters, surrounded by Russia's exclusive economic zone, but is not in Russia's default EEZ because it is more than 200 nautical miles from any coast, essentially an area of international waters surrounded by Russian territory.

2. There is a huge abandoned fortress 70 nautical miles off the coast of Key West in Florida. Fort Jefferson remains the largest all-masonry fort in the United States and was briefly used as a prison for Union deserters in the Civil War.

3. Disney has a 3 nautical mile (~3.5m) no fly zone around it; sharing a long list of military bases

4. A Chinese tycoon has developed plans for a Nicaraguan Canal, which would reduce fuel consumption by 6%, be 1,300 nautical miles shorter, and include fewer water locks in comparison to the Panama Canal.

5. An oil tanker ships may require up to five nautical miles to stop (with gears in full reverse)

6. The difference between knots and mph/kph. A nautical mile is based on the circumference of the earth, and is equal to one minute of latitude. It is slightly more than a land-measured mile (1 nautical mile = 1.1508 land miles). A knot is 1 nautical mile per hour.

7. Howland Island (1700 Nautical Miles from Honolulu) is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the US which has been abandoned three times and is still an uninhabited coral island. Aviation pioneer Amelia Mary Earhart disappeared en route to this island on 2 July, 1937.

8. About Kai Tak Airport and the Runway 13 approach, which involved the pilot making a 47 degree visual right turn to line up to the runway, with only two nautical miles to do so. Passengers and pilots who flew this approach called it the "Kai Tak Heart Attack."

9. On this day in 1958 the U.S.S. Nautilus, the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine, completed a submerged transit of the North Pole traveling 1,590 nautical miles under the ice

10. A CABLE is a unit of length in nautical usage. It is the length of a ship's cable, about 600 feet. A nautical mile is 10 cable lengths, or 6,076 feet.

Why nautical miles are different from land miles?

You can easily fact check why nautical miles different by examining the linked well-known sources.

The U.S. National Ice Center monitors and names icebergs larger than 10 nautical miles long according to their longitude.

Point Nemo is the farthest one can get from dry land. It is 1,450 nautical miles from the nearest landfall. - source

In 2012, The National Archives published schematics and details of a 1950s military venture, named Project 1794, to build a supersonic flying saucer. Declassified materials show the saucer was to reach top speed of between Mach3-to-4, a 100K+ foot ceiling and a maximum range ~1K nautical miles. - source

The "Cod Wars", three territorial expansion disputes between The United Kingdom and Iceland. Iceland won on each account and eventually expanded its water border out to 200 nautical miles as exclusive fishery zoning.

If a foreign-born female gives birth on an airplane in U.S. airspace, or on a ship within 12 nautical miles of the U.S. coast, her child automatically becomes a U.S. citizen. - source

When were nautical miles invented?

At the onset of the Falkans War the RAF flew Operation Black Buck to bomb the runway at Port Stanley Airport and other targets. At almost 6,800 nautical miles (12,600 km) and 16 hours for the return journey, they were the longest-ranged bombing raids in history at that time.

How to calculate nautical miles?

It’s approximately sixty-nine hundred nautical miles from Lake Titicaca to Djibouti.

The Airbus A380 creates hurricane strength winds - even a 747 must maintain a 6 nautical mile gap on takeoff and landing

In the late 1800's a ship called the HMS challenger sailed 68,890 nautical miles (127,580 KM) around the worlds ocean, and discovered the deepest part of the ocean, known today as Challanger Deep (Mariana Trench)

About the USS Zumwalt, which is the US Navy's largest Destroyer built, guards the shores of Southern California with a long range ballistic system which can reach up to 100 Nautical miles. The ship's skipper is Captain James Kirk.