This just in from John MacMullen, Reporter-At-Large for PomeRantz:
Smoot, Namesake of a Unit of Length, Retires, from NPR
For those of you unfortunate enough not to be familiar with Boston, the Mass Ave bridge, which crosses the Charles River to MIT, is measured in smoots, which get repainted every year — as I just learned, by the new pledges in Smoot’s fraternity. It’s called the Smoot bridge probably as often as it’s called the Mass Ave bridge. It’s a Boston tradition, the smoots.
But the best part is this: Smoot works at ANSI! As John wrote, you just can’t make up stuff that funny.