The yard is a unit of length in the imperial and US system and uses the symbol yd.
A yard is equal to 3 ft or 36 inches. There is 0.9144 m in a yard. There are 1760 yards in a mile.
Derived from the Old English 'gyrd' or 'gerd', the yard was first defined in the late 1600s laws of Ine of Wessex where a "yard of land" (yardland) was an old unit of tax assessment by the government.
The yard was the original standard adpoted by early English leaders and was apparently used in length by the Saxon race and represented the breadth of the chest of a man. After a relative hiatus, Queen Elizabeth reintroduced the yard as the English standard of measure, and it still survives in many 2nd generation conversations today.
The furlong is a unit of length in the imperial unit system and uses the symbol fur.
One furlong is equal to 1/8 mile, 660 feet, 220 yards, 40 rods, 10 chains or ≈ 201m.
The furlong was a term used to describe the legnth of a furrow in one acre of a ploughed open field (communal field). It now only really remains in the world of horse-racing in UK, Ireland, Canada and the US.