Somebody told me once how weird it is that a mile is so close to two thousand steps. Mile from mille, for thousand; like millennium or millimeter. A mile is a thousand paces, a pace is a step with the right foot and a step with the left. In the very old days, before GPS, if you needed a long distance measured you went to a professional walker and counter. Using that very crude technology and the angle of a shadow at noon, ancient people were able to figure out the size of the Earth to within a few percent.