| Some people might call Harland Sanders a late | | | | his sole income became his $105 per month Social |
| bloomer, but by the time he put Kentucky Fried | | | | Security checks. Undaunted, two years later, at age |
| Chicken on America's tables he had already had at | | | | sixty-two, Sanders hit the road with a plan to franchise |
| least a dozen careers. | | | | his fried chicken, for a nickel for each chicken sold, to |
| Born in 1890, Sanders learned to cook at age seven | | | | restaurants across the United States. Amazingly, the |
| after his father died and his mother was forced to go | | | | plan worked, and by 1964 the Colonel's chicken was |
| to work. At age ten, young Harland got his first real | | | | being sold in more than six hundred restaurants. At |
| job, on a nearby farm, and by fifteen he was working | | | | age seventy-four, Sanders sold his business for $2 |
| as a streetcar conductor. At sixteen, he joined the | | | | million and became the official spokesman for |
| Army and ended up serving in Cuba. | | | | Kentucky Fried Chicken. By 1974, he was ranked as |
| In the following decades, Sanders worked as a railroad | | | | the second-most recognized celebrity in the world. |
| fireman, became a lawyer and practiced law, operated | | | | Colonel Sanders died in 1980 at the age of ninety from |
| a steamboat on the Ohio River, sold insurance, and, in | | | | leukemia, but his smiling image still graces KFC's |
| 1930, finally settled down to run a service station in | | | | packaging. |
| Corbin, Kentucky. Just running a service station was, of | | | | The decision to change the name of the restaurant |
| course, not enough for the energetic Sanders, and | | | | chain from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC in 1991 |
| soon he was putting his cooking skills to use again, | | | | spawned a range of bizarre rumors and urban |
| providing meals for travelers, first in his own dining | | | | legends, including speculation that KFC was raising vast |
| room and eventually in a restaurant across the road. | | | | herds of mutant Frankenchickens in secret and that |
| Over the next few years he concentrated on | | | | the USDA had forbidden KFC to use the word |
| perfecting his special recipe for fried chicken, devising | | | | chicken in reference to the creatures. The truth was |
| the "eleven herbs and spices" of the "secret recipe" still | | | | simply that the corporation was planning to begin |
| zealously guarded by KFC. Sanders's chicken became | | | | offering non-chicken menu items, and also thought it |
| so popular that in 1935 he was made a Kentucky | | | | wise to downplay the word fried in an increasingly |
| Colonel in recognition of his contribution to the state's | | | | health-conscious marketplace. |
| cuisine. | | | | Still today, the "finger lickin' good" moniker for KFC |
| In 1950, however, a new highway bypassing the town | | | | stands as one of the most well known phrases. |
| of Corbin effectively put Sanders out of business, and | | | | |