The Kentucky Derby is the oldest continuously held horse race in the country. It is held at Churchill Downs in Louisville
on the first Saturday in May.
The Bluegrass Country around Lexington is home to some of the world's finest racehorses
Kentucky
was a popular hunting ground for the Shawnee and Cherokee Indian nations prior to being settled by white settlers.
Cheeseburgers
were first served in 1934 at Kaolin's restaurant in Louisville.
Chevrolet Corvettes are manufactured in Bowling Green.
Mammoth Cave is the world's longest cave and was first promoted in 1816, making it the second oldest tourist attraction
in the United States. Niagara Falls, New York is first.
Begun in 1819 the first commercial oil well was on the Cumberland
River in McCreary County.
The first Miss America from Kentucky is Heather Renee French. She was crowned September 18,
1999.
The first Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant owned and operated by Colonel Sanders is located in Corbin.
Kentucky is the state where both Abraham Lincoln, President of the Union, and Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy,
were born. They were born less than one hundred miles and one year apart.
Cumberland is the only waterfall in
the world to regularly display a Moonbow. It is located just southwest of Corbin.
The town of Corbin was the birthplace
of old time movie star Arthur Lake whose real surname was Silverlake: He played the role of Dagwood in the "Blondie" films
of the 1930s and ‘40s. Lake's parents were trapeze artists billed as The Flying Silverlakes.
Thunder Over Louisville
is the opening ceremony for the Kentucky Derby Festival and is the world's largest fireworks display.
More than 100
native Kentuckians have been elected governors of other states.
The song "Happy Birthday to You" was the
creation of two Louisville sisters in 1893.
Teacher Mary S. Wilson held the first observance of Mother's
Day in Henderson in 1887. It was made a national holiday in 1916.
The first American performance of a Beethoven symphony
was in Lexington in 1817.
Post-It Notes are manufactured exclusively in Cynthiana. The exact number made annually of these popular notes is a trade
secret.
Bluegrass is not really blue--its green--but in the spring bluegrass produces bluish purple buds that when
seen in large fields give a blue cast to the grass. Today Kentucky is known as the Bluegrass State.
The public
saw an electric light for the first time in Louisville. Thomas Edison introduced his incandescent light bulb to crowds at
the Southern Exposition in 1883.
The radio was invented by a Kentuckian named Nathan B. Stubblefield of
Murray in 1892. It was three years before Marconi made his claim to the invention.
The first enamel bathtub was made
in Louisville in 1856.
In the War of 1812 more than half of all Americans killed in action were Kentuckians.
Middlesboro
is the only city in the United States built within a meteor crater.
The world's largest free-swinging bell known as
the World Peace Bell is on permanent display in Newport.
High Bridge located near Nicholasville is the highest railroad
bridge over navigable water in the United States.
Carrie Nation the spokesperson against rum, tobacco, pornography,
and corsets was born near Lancaster in Garrard County.
More than $6 billion worth of gold is held in the underground
vaults of Fort Knox. This is the largest amount of gold stored anywhere in the world.
Kentucky-born Alben W. Barkley
was the oldest United States Vice President when he assumed office in 1949. He was 71 years old.
The Lost River Cave
and Valley Bowling Green includes a cave with the shortest and deepest underground river in the world. It contains the largest
cave opening east of the Mississippi.
The swimsuit Mark Spitz wore in the 1972 Olympic games was manufactured
in Paris, Kentucky.
Pike County the world's largest producer of coal is famous for the Hatfield-McCoy feud, an Appalachian vendetta that
lasted from the Civil War to the 1890s.
The world's largest baseball bat, 120 ft. tall & 68,000lbs, stands at
the Louisville Slugger Museum.
The Jif plant in Lexington is the largest peanut butter producing facility in the world.
