Convert League (lea) to League (Statute) (st.league) instantly.
About these units
League (lea)
The league is an old unit of distance whose length varied widely across cultures, usually somewhere between 2.4 and 5.5 kilometers. Historically, it represented the distance a person could walk in an hour. Maritime and overland leagues existed, further complicating the unit's consistency across regions. In literature—particularly in adventure writing such as Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas—the league became a poetic and evocative measure of great distances. Even when not scientifically precise, its cultural and narrative resonance helped cement its place in storytelling. Though obsolete in modern measurement, the league remains an evocative relic of pre-industrial travel, when human endurance served as a baseline for measurement.
League (Statute) (st.league)
The statute league was historically defined as 3 statute miles (~4.828 km). It originated as a measure of distance a person could travel on foot in about an hour. Leagues were widely used in exploration, mapping, and maritime navigation prior to the universal adoption of standardized miles and kilometers. They also appear extensively in literature, conveying narrative distances in a way more relatable to the human scale. Though obsolete in modern usage, the statute league provides cultural and historical context for maps, journals, and records from the 16th through 19th centuries.