[Bobboau]

Just stumbled upon the fact that about 10 years ago this thread was used as a reference in this book  for chapter 8.
and I figured some people here would find that interesting.

[Mongoose]

As a teacher I'm fairly certain I would reject an unattributed forum post as a legitimate academic source.

[Scourge of Ages]

I'm sure the Ubisoft forum the thread in question was stolen from, stole theirs from another source. The origin of this story is probably easily findable somewhere. Because I'm sure I've heard it before, I think on Radiolab, and I doubt they just cribbed from hard-light too

Pre-posting edit: SNOOOOOOOOOOOOOPES! http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.asp

Popular Mechanics.   “Ancient Romans Determined Our Standard Railway Gauge.”
May 1905   p. 506.

Real edit: It's still pretty cool to be quoted as a source in anything published though. And it's always nice to see that FS2, the SCP, or one of the big mods still gets featured once in a while in PC Gamer.

[AdmiralRalwood]

As a teacher I'm fairly certain I would reject an unattributed forum post as a legitimate academic source.

If you read the reference in context, it's specifically referring to how the story has been copied "from one bulletin board to the next", so it's actually just an example of one such forum post rather than as a reference for the information contained within.