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.
The metre (or meter; US spelling) is the SI base unit of length and uses the symbol m.
Originally defined in 1793 as one ten-millionth of the distance from the equator to the North Pole but was redefined in 1799 in terms of a prototyped metre bar (this bar was changed again in 1889).
In 1983 the current definition was adopted and it is now the most common unit in any property in the world and is used in thousands of formulae to describe countless characteristics.
Let's hear it for the metre!