In 1999 NASA lost $125 million because a team of engineering contractors erroneously used English measurements rather than metric. Let’s hope today’s Space Shuttle launch goes a lot more smoothly.

Related Fact: The United States, Liberia and Myanmar are the only three countries in the world that don’t use the metric system as their primary system of measurement.

[Sources: CNN and Gizmodo . See previous Numbers of the Day here. ]