This Day, That Year – March 13

J. L. Johnstone of England invented the starting gate used in horse racing on this day in 1894.

Did you know that:

• Cambridge College was renamed Harvard for clergyman John Harvard on this day in 1639
• William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus on this day in 1781, first assumed to be a “comet”
• Chester Greenwood received a patent for earmuffs on this day in 1877 after inventing them at the age of fifteen