US gallon (gal)
Definition: A US gallon is a unit of volume equal to exactly 3.785411784 liters, or 4 US quarts.
History/origin: The US gallon descends from the older English wine gallon that the United States retained after independence, instead of adopting the later imperial gallon.
Current use: US gallons are used in the United States for gasoline, paint, industrial liquids, and larger beverage containers.
Cubic kilometer (km³)
Definition: The cubic kilometer is a huge metric volume unit. A 1 km by 1 km by 1 km cube contains 1,000,000,000 m³, or 1,000,000,000,000 L.
History/origin: Earth science needed a readable unit for massive natural volumes, so km³ became useful for water bodies, ice, rock, magma, and atmosphere-scale quantities.
Current use: Km³ appears in hydrology, climate reports, ocean volume estimates, glacier studies, volcanic eruption data, reservoir capacity, and large-scale geography.