On this Day… April 13

In 1869, the first air brake was patented by 22year-old George Westinghouse. The railway braking system of the time involved applying an individual brake in every second carriage, so not surprisingly it took hundreds of yards for the train to stop. Westinghouse persuaded the Pennsylvania Railroad to let him fit a prototype air brake to one of their trains and test it on a suburban track. As the train reached 40 miles per hour, a horse and a cart suddenly appeared on the line. The driver braked fiercely and the train stopped so suddenly that everyone was hurled to the floor. The directors were convinced, but they did think it a strange coincidence that the cart should have appeared when it did. Westinghouse said nothing!

In 1743, "The moonshine philosopher" Thomas Jefferson was born. Author of the Declaration of Independence and third U.S. president, he was always "as busy as a bee in a molasses barrel." He founded the University of Virginia, designed his own house at Monticello with self-opening doors and a refrigerator, invented a pedometer, a perpetual clock and a plough, and is said to have gone through $10,000 worth of wine while in the White House. After his wife died, a young mulatto slave, Sally Hemings, is said to have borne him five children. But though stories of his "slave-mistress" caused a great furor, Sally was in fact his wife's half sister!