What is an international nautical mile?
An international nautical mile is exactly 1,852 meters, which is about 1.15078 statute miles. The word 'nautical' distinguishes it from the statute mile used on land.
Because the nautical mile began as one minute of latitude, the Earth's circumference works out at roughly 21,600 nautical miles (360 degrees of 60 minutes each). Navigators measure distance directly off the latitude scale on a chart.
A tenth of a nautical mile is a cable, which is 185.2 meters and is still used for short distances at sea. Minutes and seconds belong to the angles of latitude and longitude, not to the unit itself.
What is a centimeter?
A centimeter (cm) is one hundredth of a meter and just under four tenths of an inch (0.3937 inches). The prefix comes from the Latin centum, a hundred.
Divide centimeters by 30.48 to get feet, or multiply feet by 30.48 to get centimeters. The factor is exact, as a foot is 30.48cm, and a single centimeter is about 0.0328 feet.
The centimeter was the base unit of length in the CGS (centimeter, gram, second) system that physicists used before SI, which is why older physics talks about dynes and ergs.