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Notable Events In Kentucky History |
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January 3, 1817
Thomas Elliott Bramlette was born in Cumberland County.
He was a member of state legislature, 1841; candidate for U.S. Representative
from Kentucky's 4th District, 1853; state court judge in Kentucky, 1856; colonel
in the Union Army during the Civil War; U.S. District Attorney for Kentucky,
1863; Governor of Kentucky, 1863-67; received 3 electoral votes for
Vice-President, 1872. Thomas died in Louisville, January 12, 1875. His interment
was at Cave Hill Cemetery. |
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January 3, 1927
Abdallah Park Grandstand in Cynthiana in Harrison County burns.
The park started out as a horse track and was operated by W.H. Wilson in the
19th century. Today, the site is an industrial park. |
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January 6, 1920
Kentucky ratifies the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,
giving women the power of the vote. "The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation." |
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January 18, 1820
Confederate Brigadier General Abraham Buford is born in
Woodford County. He died in Lexington on June 9, 1884 and is buried in
Lexington Cemetery. |
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January 22, 1843
Albert Shelby Willis was born in Shelbyville. He was a Democrat
and was U.S. Representative from Kentucky's 5th District, 1877-87. He was U.S.
Minister to Hawaiian Islands from 1893 to 1897. Willis died in office
January 6, 1897 in Honolulu, Island of Oahu, Honolulu County, Hawaii. He was interred at Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville. |
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January 28, 1963
Kentucky Record minus 34 degrees. |
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February 3, 1900
William Goebel dies of a gunshot wound
received four days earlier. In a contested gubernatorial election, Goebel
was declared the winner - after being shot. |
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February 11, 1979
Kentucky State Trooper
Clinton Eugene Cunningham is ambushed and killed while on duty in Franklin
County. |
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February 12, 1809
The accepted date of Abraham Lincoln's birthday. |
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February 20, 1933
Congress repeals the 21st Amendment prohibiting
the manufacture and use of alcohol. Kentucky distilleries kick into
over-drive to make up for lost time. |
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February 23, 1847
The US Army under Zachary Taylor wins the Battle
of Buena Vista, trumping Gen. Santa Anna. Kentuckians both fought and died
bravely by all accounts. Kentuckian Jefferson Davis, leading Mississippi
and Tennessee troops is badly wounded when a ball nicks one of his spurs and
enters his heel. Despite this wound, he stays in the saddle for the
duration of the battle. |
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March 1, 1830
Twenty-one year old Abe
Lincoln, with family, starts out from Indiana to settle in Illinois. |
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March 1, 1997
Massive flooding visits
Kentucky leaving thousands homeless and killing 50 people. |
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March 5, 1860
Gov. Beriah Magoffin signs the
bill in to law establishing the Kentucky State Guard. Simon B. Buckner was
appointed inspector general with the rank of Major General. |
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March 24, 1898
The USS Kentucky is launched
at Newport News, Virginia. |
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March 27, 1890
Tornados rip through Illinois,
Indiana, and Kentucky. In Louisville alone, 76 people were killed, 44 of
those were in one building. |
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April 3-6, 1974
The worst round of tornados in recent memory tears through the Commonwealth,
causing millions of dollars in damage and killing dozens. The town of
Brandenburg is nearly wiped out. The webmaster, still being only a few
days from birth, was nearly a casualty; in Stanford (Lincoln County), a twister,
headed towards the car his family was in, "jumped" over the car and kept on
going. |
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April 2, 1849
The New York Herald reported on April 2, 1849 that the The
Louisville Courier listed a number of Kentuckians leaving for California via the
overland route. Most were heading to dig their fortune from the gold
fields. Those leaving in this group were:
Bardin, C.P.
Chin, M.A.
Fox, Jacob S.
Johnston, M.B.
Mayhall, W.D.
Baxter, J.H.
Conroy, Henry
Goach, J.S.
Kaye, F.A., Jr.
McCleary, J.
Bland, Theo.
Cory, Samuel
Graf, Abraham
Kaye, John
McCracken, M.
Brown, M.
Crawford, Ed.
Graf, Ferdinand
Ludwig, L.W.
McDuffy, B.
Brown,, S.
Dulaney, C.F.
Griffin, Morris
Marshall, H.
McFarland., W.
Bryant, Edwin
Dunn, Justus
Harris, Matthew
Marshall, J.H.
McMillen, S.
Bryson, Ed. A.
Fogerty, Ed.
Haynes, H.
Martin, D.D.
Miller, Dr. B.
Buck, E. (?)
Fox, Henry Hule (Huie
?), Dr., and lady
Martin, Dr. Miner,J.H
Byers, Henry (?)
Fox, Jacob Hule (Huie ?), J.B.
Martin, H.D.
Moore, Geo. G.
Moore, John T.
Pope, Wallace
Shaefer, F.H. T_ford (Tilford ?) F.
Moore, R.W.
Prather, J.S.
Sheddell, Bernard Thomas, L.K.
Morgan, _.C.
Rankin, A.
Smiley, C. Thompson, I.D.
Murray, O.J.
Raphael, S.
Smith, J.T. Thompson, Lieut., U.S. Navy
Musselman, A.
Reader, S.P.
Smith, John Todd, John
Neblett, Ed.
Redd, R.H.
Stewart, James L Wakeman, W.B.
Parker, Z.D.
Richardson, W.P.
Stewart, W.G. Weems, Dr.
Percival, W.
Ross, George
Stone, D.C. Wingate, R.A.
Pope, Robert
S_ager, (Seager ?), J. Stout, B.
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April 11, 1944
While ferrying a B-29H "Liberator", serial number
42-95064, through Brazil, on their way to Africa, the crew lost contact over the
Amazon jungle. Aboard was Williamsburg native Sgt. Herman Smith. The
bomber had gone down in the jungle sometime after 9:05am. The craft was
not found in the dense jungle growth, and the crew was presumed dead.
Finally, in 1995, a team from the Army Central Identification Laboratory in
Hawaii (CILHI), going on a report from the Brazilian army, found the wreckage
near Macapa, on the Amazon river. The remains of the 10 crew members,
including Sgt. Smith, were recovered and brought back to the US. They were
re-interred on February 20, 1998 in Arlington National Cemetery with full
military honors. |
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April 12, 1861
Kentuckian Robert Anderson, commanding the Federal garrison at Fort Sumter in
Charleston harbour, S.C., is fired upon by Confederates under his former West
Point artillery student, Pierre G.T. Beauregard. Being cut off from
supplies and seeing the futility of further resistance, Anderson surrendered the
garrison on the 14th. The only casualty was a horse - a bloodless
beginning to a bloody Civil War. |
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May 1, 1810
Butler County was formed from Logan and Ohio
Counties. |
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May 17, 1817
Isaac Callahan, Thomas Begley, Jr., and Archelous
Gibson are hanged for the murder of David Newberry. While the murder was
in Clay County, Kentucky there was a change of venue to Knox County, Kentucky where the hangings
occurred. |
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May 17, 1875
The very first Kentucky Derby is run at Churchill
Downs in Louisville. After returning from a trip to England to in 1872,
Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr., grandson of the explorer William Clark, concocted
the idea of a jockey club for fellow sportsmen to race and as a showcase for
fine Kentucky horses. Clark built the track and named it for his mother,
Abigail Prather Churchill. The first horse to win the first Kentucky Derby
was Aristides, ridden by jockey Oliver Lewis. |
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May 17, 1875
After a long illness, former US Vice
President and Confederate General John C. Breckinridge died at his home on 2nd
St. in
Lexington, a few minutes before 6pm. He was 54 years old. |
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June 1849
Cholera again visits central Kentucky.
While not quite as bad as the 1833 episode, Lexington lost 345. |
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June 1, 1792
Kentucky becomes a state! Vermont just
beating us to the punch, we became the 15th state in the Union. The
legislature convened on the second floor of the Market House in Lexington to
inaugurate Isaac Shelby as governor on June 4th. Frankfort was made the
permanent capital the next year. |
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June 3, 1833
The Asiatic Cholera appears in Lexington.
As those who could fled, they took the disease to other towns, causing an
unprecedented epidemic. Death rates in Lexington were at times 50-60
people a day. The total body count by the end of July when the epidemic
subsided was 502. One of those who did not leave, William "King" Solomon,
the town drunk, dug many of the graves and buried the victims of the outbreak. |
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June 6, 1944
D-Day, the
invasion of Normandy by Allied forces. Kentuckians
stormed the beaches in the first wave and help to
dislodge Hitler's forces from northern France. Tom
Hudson, a soldier from Lexington, jumped into a German
machine gun nest, alone, and killed the hatchlings
before they could take flight. |
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June 18, 1945
While observing the forward action on
Okinawa, Munfordville native Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., son of the
famed Confederate General, was killed when a Japanese shell burst near his
position. The blast sent a chunk of coral through the General's
head. Buckner, therefore, has the dubious distinction of being the highest
ranking US officer to be killed in WWII. |
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July 1857
James B. Clay finished his
Italianate mansion on the outskirts of Lexington. His father, Henry Clay,
had built Ashland in 1805-1806 and by the mid 1850s, the house had declined to a
state of near ruin. James razed Henry's house and built his own house on
the same foundation, using much of the original materials. |
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July 1863
Martial law is declared in
order to help protect the L&N RR (Louisville and Nashville Railroad).
Confederates operating within Kentucky had targeted the L&N repeatedly,
commandeering locomotives, cars, and supplies. Losses to the company
amounted to over $250,000 during the war (about five million dollars at today's
prices) |
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July 3, 1865
Nathaniel Wolfe, once a state senator from
Jefferson County and Louisville lawyer, died in that city at the age of 54.
Wolfe County was named in his honor in 1860. |
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July 4, 1802
John Larue Helm was born in
Hardin County. Helm served as county attorney for Hardin county for
sixteen years. Serving several terms in the Ky legislature, he was elected
Lt. Governor in 1848 under John J. Crittenden. Upon Crittenden's
acceptance of US Attorney General under President Fillmore, Helm became Governor
in 1850. Helm took over the reins of the fledgling L&N RR in 1854 and left
it a thriving business. He again became Governor and took the oath of
office in his home on September 3, 1867, but served only five days before he
died on September 8. |
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July 30, 1948
Sophonisba Preston
Breckinridge, educator, suffragette, and champion of the down-trodden, died
after a life of service to her fellow man. The daughter of Col. W.C.P.
Breckinridge, she was laid to rest in Lexington Cemetery next to him. |
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August 5, 1828
Samuel Woodson Price
was born near Nicholasville. In 1849, Price painted the famous portrait of
William "King" Solomon. Price served as a Union General during the Civil
War and was wounded at the battle of Kennesaw Mountain. He died January
22, 1918 in St. Louis, Mo., and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. |
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August 5, 1961
The Oleika Temple was
dedicated at 326 Southland Drive in Lexington. The building had cost about
$123,000. |
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August 29, 1862
Hardened Confederate forces
under Gen. Patrick Cleburne and Union forces, mostly raw recruits, under Gen. Mahlon Manson form lines of battle on the morning of the 29th near the small
village of Kingston in Madison County. What ensued over the course of the
day resulted in the Federals losing about 80% in killed and captured soldiers,
including all of their artillery. The engagement ended in the city
cemetery, about 7 miles north of where it began. Known as the Battle of
Richmond, it was the most one sided victory of the war. |
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September 1, 1954
For the weekend ending on
this day, the song "Blue Moon of Kentucky" recorded by Elvis Presley was #1 on
the music charts in Memphis, TN. |
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September 7-17, 1778
The siege of Boonesborough.
Over 400 Indians and Frenchmen loyal to the British surrounded the fort on the
Kentucky river in present day Madison County. After an unsuccessful
meeting of the leaders on both sides, the Indians tried to rush the fort gate,
but were driven back by gunfire. The Indians began to dig a tunnel to
undermine the fort walls, but heavy rains caused the tunnel to collapse before it
was finished. After a final attack on the 17th, the Indian force, which
had suffered heavy casualties in the siege, left, breaking into various raiding
parties to go off and reap havoc on less defended settlements. |
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September 11, 1915
The USS Kentucky (BB-6)
sailed out of the port of Philadelphia for Vera Cruz to guard over American
interests during the upheaval of the Mexican Revolution. |
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September 26, 1820
Daniel Boone, hero of
the Kentucky frontier, dies at his daughter's home in Missouri. Boone was
86 years of age. The only known portrait of Boone from life was painted
shortly before his death by Chester Harding. |
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October 8, 1862
In a severe drought, Union and Confederate armies near
Danville sent out scouts to find water. They didn't find much water, but
they did find each other on Doctor's Fork of the Chaplin River near the small
burg of Perryville. What ensued was the bloodiest battle to ever occur in
Kentucky soil. Tactically, the Confederates won the battle at the end of
the struggle, but retreated during the night in the face of overwhelming numbers
that would have met them the next day. The thousands of dead were buried
on the battlefield. The Union dead were eventually moved to Camp Nelson
National Cemetery in Garrard County. The Confederate dead were buried by
Squire Bottoms, on whose land much of the fighting happened. They are
still there today in three mass graves. |
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November 1814
General Duncan McAuthur led an
expedition of primarily Kentucky Militia over 200 miles into British held
territory. The Kentuckians captured hundreds of British regulars and Canadian
Militia, destroying munitions, bridges, and gristmills. The raid forced the
British at Fort Erie to withdraw to Canada. |
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November 9, 1968
Henderson suffered from
an earthquake whose epicenter was in southern Illinois. The City Building
sustained masonry damage. |
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November 12, 1881
The very first game of
college football was played between A&M College and Kentucky University.
A&M (the future University of Kentucky) defeated KU with a score of 7 and 1/4 to
1. Yes, that's 7.25 points to 1 point. Go figure. |
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November 20, 1834
Houses were shaken and plaster
cracked in northern Kentucky as an earthquake hit. It was reported the
something that sounded like thunder was heard. |
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