Kentucky Trivia

July 23, 1819, Bushrod Boswell, a Lexington merchant, and Samuel Q. Richardson, a Cincinnati attorney, met in a duel with pistols on the Fayette/Woodford county line.  Richardson broke his arm, and Boswell escaped injury.  The matter had been long-standing.  The Squire’s Sketches of Lexington, by J. Winston Cleman, Jr., pg: 32

On July 23, 1826, Kentucky horsemen formed the Kentucky Association (also known as the “Kentucky Racing Association”) to promote the breeding and racing of thoroughbred horses in Kentucky.  Prominent locals, including planter and politician Henry Clay, Jesse Bledsoe, Dr. Elisha Warfield, and Thomas F. Marshall, all helped establish the Association.  Between 1828 and 1834, the Association acquired 65 acres of land in Lexington, today’s downtown area and built a one-mile dirt racetrack with a grandstand and stables to host thoroughbred flat racing.

July 23, 1850, Thomas Corwin, also known as Tom Corwin, the Wagon Boy, or Black Tom, from Bourbon County became the 20^th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.

July 23, 1863, Bourbon County native Kenner Garrard became a brigadier general commemorating his pursuit of Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia.

July 23, 1879, in one of Kentucky’s most sensational trials, a jury found Thomas Buford guilty and sentenced him to life imprisonment for the murder of John Elliott, a federal judge, in Frankfort.  On an appeal, another court found him not guilty by reason of insanity, and he went to the Kentucky Insane Asylum in Anchorage.  Sometime later, he escaped but returned to die.  The Kentucky Encyclopedia edited by John E. Kleber; pg: 291

On July 23, 1945, Fred M. Vinson, born in the Lawrence County jail in Louisa, became the 53^rd U.S. Secretary of the Treasury.  One year later, he became the 13^th Chief Justice of the United States.

July 23, 1948, Oldham County native David Wark Griffith passed away.

July 23, 1952, Army CPL David J. Kelley from Knott County died in the Korean War.

July 23, 1953, Air Force A3C Grant D. Carter, Jr. from Louisville died in the Korean War.

July 23, 1961, Daylight Savings Time ended at 2:00:00 am.  However, clocks were not changed in Louisville because they switched time zones at the same time.

July 23, 1968, Navy P01 John F. Bobb from Erlanger in Kenton County died in the Vietnam War.

July 23, 1969, Marine Corps PFC Philip Hammons from Covington in Kenton County died in the Vietnam War.

July 23, 1971, the Pentagon overruled Fort Knox post officials and decided that the 38 Army doctors and dentists who signed and paid for an anti-war advertisement in the Courier-Journal did not violate Army regulations after all.

July 23, 1972, Army SP4 Ronnie L. Gipson from Benton in Marshall County died in the Vietnam War.

July 23, 1981, UK announced a deadly herbicide killed seven square miles (3,000 acres) of crops in Calloway and Graves Counties.  The mystery remained: which chemical was it and who sprayed it?

July 23, 1985, a bay colt by Nijinsky II brought a world record $13.1 million at the Keeneland July Select Yearling Sale with Briton Robert Sangster and partners outbidding D. Wayne Lukas for the half-brother to Seattle Slew.

July 23, 1986, Willie Dawahare passed away.  One of 11 children of an immigrant Syrian peddler, Willie helped the Dawahare clothing store grow from its beginning in Neon in Letcher County to a chain that reached beyond the mountains into Lexington, Louisville, Cincinnati, and Memphis, Tennessee.

July 23, 1990, high school students in the Governor’s Scholars Program at Centre College marched and carried signs to protest the wastewater pipeline from the Union Underwear plant to Lake Cumberland.  Lexington’s Morton Junior High students rounded up $500 to give to the Lake Cumberland Trust, an origination that fought the pipeline.

July 23, 1991, Corbin native Staff Sgt. Ricky L. Bunch, 29, died in Kuwait fighting as an Army Soldier.

July 23, 1993, Kentucky lottery staff members, rocked by a scathing audit and facing a top-down house cleaning, supposedly destroyed records used against them.

July 23, 2004, Governor E. Fletcher announced that nearly two-thirds of Kentucky adults were overweight or obese.  In addition, almost one-third of the state’s children were overweight or at risk of becoming overweight.  The study found that the number of obese Kentuckians grew steadily over the past several decades.

July 23, 2015, astronomers discovered Kepler-452b, Earth’s cousin.

July 23, 2016, Saratoga’s GI $500,000 Diana Stakes for fillies and mares three-year-old and upward was almost a triple dead heat.

Sunday, July 23, 2017, on Meet the Press, Adam Schiff stated, “At the end of the day we need to make sure that our president is operating not in his personal best interests and not because he’s worried about what the Russians might have but because what he is doing is in America’s best interest.”  The following morning on Twitter, Trump called Schiff Sleazy Adam Schiff, and called the Russian collusion investigation the Dem loss excuse.  Schiff responded on Twitter that the president’s “comments and actions are beneath the dignity of the office.”