By Steve Flairty
NKyTribune columnist
Are you looking to show off your knowledge of Kentucky to a friend or possibly your children… or even your spouse? You might check out the following.
Putting together this week’s Kentucky by Heart column, my 536th, was a particularly fun one for me. I’ve looked at sources all over the place to come up with “25 Nuggets about Kentucky” that hopefully will have more than passing interest for my readers. I’ve drawn from my over 1000-book Kentucky collection, other Kentucky collections, and online sources that I regularly use.
Let’s get started.
1. The state’s birthday is June 1, 1792, the America’s 15th state. It was originally part of Virginia, and leaving the mother state was a difficult process.
2. There are 120 counties, with the oldest one Fayette, established in 1780, and McCreary the newest, formed in 1912.
3. Dr. Phillip Sharp, raised on a farm near Falmouth, was the co-winner, along with Richard J. Roberts, of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. They discovered that genes can be split into segments called introns and exons, changing the way genetic structure and function is understood.
4. Floyd Collins brought international attention to Kentucky and the Mammoth Cave system when he was trapped in Sand Cave in January of 1925 and great resources were used to rescue him. He was found dead, however, but the publicity led to increased focus on cave preservation in America.
5. John Fox Jr., a noted author and protégé of James Lane Allen, was born in Bourbon County in 1862. His novel, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, was “perhaps the first in the United States to sell a million copies,” according to the Kentucky Encyclopedia.
6. Kentucky has 61 Medal of Honor winners over its history. A great showpiece of that is the Kentucky Medal of Honor Memorial in downtown Louisville.
7. The Kentucky county with the youngest median age (under 30) is Christian County, likely because of it being near Fort Campbell with a lot of young military troops.
8. The first Kentucky Derby, occurring in 1875, was won by Aristedes. Oliver Lewis, who in recent years has had a Lexington street named after him, was the jockey.
9. Louisville’s featured airport, Standiford Field, averages around 177 flights per day. The busiest connection to Standiford is Chicago.
10. The first episode of the TV series, Route 66 (1960-1964), was filmed in the Lewis County community of Concord. Here is a presentation found on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rrhdye3wmE&list=PLyQ29uBk6Pyjp-Zxe3MjPX9xP0OdbQzoC&index=1.
11. The city of Florence (of Y’all fame) was incorporated way back in 1830 but previously had been known as Polecat and Pow-Wow, as it was a place where Native Americans traded furs.
12. Kentucky reportedly has about 11,000 elk roaming its landscape. They previously had been native to the state until the mid-1880s. They were reintroduced here in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
13. The Maysville Turnpike Company completed work on the 67-mile-long Maysville and Lexington Turnpike in 1835. It became Kentucky’s first modern road and a “major lifeline to the central Bluegrass Region,” according to the book, Kentucky’s Frontier Highway: Historical Landscapes along the Maysville Road.
14. Bill Penn’s Kentucky Rebel Town: The Civil War Battles of Cynthiana & Harrison County and “his treatment of the two great battles of Cynthiana are, without question, the best ever done” said noted historian Kent Masterson.
15. Alben Barkley, born in Wheel, Kentucky, in 1877, became the oldest U.S. vice-president in history when he took office in 1949 under President Harry Truman.
16. The Duncan Hines cake mix label belongs to a Kentuckian. Hines was born in Bowling Green in 1880 and started his career as a traveling salesman.
17. Dixie Chili was started in 1929 by Greek immigrant Nicholas Sarakatsannis in Newport. It became the first chili parlor in Northern Kentucky. It was launched at 733 Monmouth Street, and the store still thrives today.
18. Kentucky produces about 95% of the world’s bourbon.
19. Daniel Beard was one of the founders of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) as well as being an acclaimed artist. He designed the BSA’s uniforms, patches, and awards. He was raised in Covington at 322 Third Street, and today it is a historic landmark.
20. Carroll “Hop” Ewing was elected mayor of Florence in 1961, and the city saw tremendous growth under his 20-year tenure. He served in the U.S. Marine Corp in both WW II and the Korean War and was a long-time educator.
21. The geographical high point of Kentucky is at Black Mountain, 4145 feet, and the low point is the Mississippi River at Kentucky Bend, only 257 feet.
22. Nearly every Post-It-Note sold in the world is made at Cynthiana at the 3M plant.
23. The town of Middlesboro, in the southeastern part of the state, was founded and incorporated in 1886-1890. However, it sits on the place where a meteorite landed reportedly 300 million years ago.
24. Since 1981, the Bowling Green Assembly Plant has been the world’s exclusive manufacturer of Corvettes. The plant employs about 1100 to 1400, an important economic boost for the area.
25. After Alaska, Kentucky has more running freshwater than any other state, with 1,100 commercially navigable miles.
Hopefully, something mentioned here will spur your interest in learning much more about a particular “Kentucky nugget” item or may get you excited about doing a day trip as a follow up activity. Or it may simply help you to talk “Kentucky” during your next dinner date.