1980 Harlan Sanders - Kentucky Fried Chicken Founder
1944 Glenn Miller - Jazz orchestra leader/composer
1859 Wilhelm Grimm - Comparative philologist and folktale collector
Colonel Sanders was a true Kentucky Colonel, along with Lyndon Johnson and Winston Churchill (yes, you read that correctly!). He started cooking and selling chicken in ernest at age 65, with money from his $165 Social Security retirement check. He sold his franchise business for 2 million finger-lickin-good dollars. Here's a quote attributed to him:
"There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery. You can't do any business from there."
Glenn Miller was a decorated MIA war hero. Read a short bio at the Glenn Miller Birthplace Society website.
Compare the text-content about Wilhelm Grimm at this link with that of the link above.
In the early 1980's I was fortunate to experience a Wanderjahr in Europe and to study German at Heidelberg University. One of my mementos of that experience is a 3-volume set of Grimms' Fairy Tales in the original dialects, purchased from an academic bookstore serving the university community in Heidelberg. Some of the dialectal versions of the tales are much earthier, if not more gruesome, than those of the later refined editions.
If you're prompted to delve into the fairy tales beyond just reading for enjoyment, I suggest this book as a fairly good starting point, especially for those with a Freudian bent: The Uses of Enchantment - The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, by Bruno Bettelheim.
tags: fried chicken, Kentucky, jazz, Glenn Miller, Grimm, fairy tales, Germany, Heidelberg, wanderjahr
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