The rod is a unit of length in the imperial and US sytem and uses the symbol rod.
A rod (or perch, pole, lug) is equal to 16.5 feet or 5.5 yards.
It is a building surveyor's tool for measuring distance and is particularly useful as multiples of this unit can make up an exact acre. A perfect acre is a rectangle with edges 660 feet and 66 feet - which is 40 rods by 4 rods; i.e. 1 acre = 160 square rods.
The mile is a unit of length in the imperial unit system with the symbol mi.
It was originally an English unit but was adopted by many countries who all had their own slight variation on definition. The English mile, however, is equal to 63,360 inches, 5280 ft or 1760 yards.
The UK still uses the mile on all roadway signs rather than the kilometre; its SI "equivalent". It used to have the symbol 'm' until SI was established and it was changed to avoid confusion with the unit metre.