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TODAY IN KENTUCKY HISTORY

Kentucky Trivia ● Kentucky Tweets

October 24, 1950, The Curious Savage, written by Louisville native John Patrick debuted.  The comedy is about Ethel P. Savage, an elderly woman whose husband recently died and left her approximately $10,000,000.  Contrasting the kindness and loyalty of psychiatric patients with the avarice and vanity of “respectable” public figures, it calls into question conventional definitions of sanity while lampooning celebrity culture.

Localtonians wish a Happy Birthday to Hazard native Shelby Lee Adams, born in 1950.  The environmental portrait photographer and artist best known for his images of Appalachian family life was the subject of a documentary film by Jennifer Baichwal in 2002 – The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams’s Appalachia.  The Toronto International Film Festival and the Sundance Festival showed the film in 2003.

October 24, 1951, Army PFC Fredericke E. Fuhrman from Kenton County died fighting in the Korean War.

October 24, 1952, Army PFC Charles E. Liford from Harlan County died fighting in the Korean War.

October 24, 1963, Air Force SSGT Walter K. Morris from Paris died fighting in the Vietnam War.

October 24, 1964, Air Force COL Don I. Williamson from Louisville died fighting in the Vietnam War.

October 24, 1967, Army PFC Gary W. Hawkins from Louisville died fighting in the Vietnam War.

October 24, 1968, Army CPL Everette R. Bailey from Georgetown, Army CPL Clyde D. Downard from Foster in Bracken County and Army PFC Willie R. Tucker from Paris, all died fighting in the Vietnam War.

October 24, 1969, Army SFC John T. Demarches from Bowling Green and Army PFC Joseph R. Hagy, Jr. from Lebanon both died fighting in the Vietnam War.

October 24, 1970, the Louisville Blades opened their season in the Mid-American Hockey League.

October 24, 1970, the Kentucky Conservation Council called for an immediate moratorium on Eastern Kentucky strip-mining.  It also took steps toward obtaining stronger strip-mining regulations from the 1972 legislature.  The Council represented 19 state conservation organizations and fifty individuals.

October 24, 1971, Owensboro’s Kentucky Wesleyan College inaugurated Dr. William E. James as their 25th President.  Delegates from 45 colleges and 2,000 visitors watched as the United Methodist Liberal Arts School held ceremonies.

On October 24, 1972, Louisville passed the long-studied ordinance creating a 15-year franchise for the operation of a cable television (CATV) system.

October 24, 1980, Waylon Jennings headlined the Kentucky Cowboy Roundup, a benefit for the Kentucky governor’s mansion renovation, at the Kentucky Horse Park.

October 24, 1984, senatorial candidate Mitch McConnell campaigned in Louisville and told the Rotary Club that one-third of all Americans receive some federal assistance.  It sounded as though he prefer the corporations and foreign countries receive the money, not poor people.

October 24, 1995, Kentucky State University received $276,000 for research on the lowly Pawpaw Tree, which grows wild on the banks of Kentucky streams.  A university official claimed the tree as a miracle plant and hoped to discover commercial relevance for the Kentucky native.

October 24, 1990, Arch Mining, the largest private employer in Breathitt County, began to notify 248 miners they would lose their jobs.  The layoff also affected workers in Perry and Knott Counties.  It was an awful day for the industry and Eastern Kentucky.

October 24, 2000, the public found out about a company internal memo that stated “a blue glow reported by workers at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant could indicate nuclear reactions occurred underground in a top-secret burial pit for atomic weapons parts.”  The memo written by a plant physicist stated a “blue glow” that looked like “blue fire” above the ground was 1st observed in the early 1980s.

On October 24, 2001, Stanford native Karen K. Caldwell became the Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky.  President Bush appointed her.  She served until 2012, when she became Chief Judge of the same court.

Friday, October 24, 2008, changes continued for the Breeders’ Cup as it celebrated its 25th year under the San Gabriel Mountains in California.  For the 1st time, horses ran over a synthetic track.  The purses totaled $25.5 million and they expanded to 14 races, adding the Turf Sprint, Juvenile Fillies Turf, and the Marathon.  The Distaff changed its name to the Ladies’ Classic and four-year Zenyatta christened the new name with a win.  BC raced five times on this day and nine races on Saturday.

Ladies Classic
Juvenile Fillies

October 24, 2010, 52% of Kentuckians approved of Senator McConnell job performance, where he had served since 1985 and led the GOP caucus since 2006.

October 24, 2015, Louisville businesses and individuals paid more than $3.8 million in fines since 2003 to resolve violations of local air pollution rules.  The #1 violators were faulty vapor controls on gas pumps.

October 24, 2019, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Trump’s nomination of a UofL Law Professor Justin Walker to a lifetime appointment as a Federal Judge.  In his late thirties, Walker earned degrees from Duke and Harvard Law; he also clerked for Justices Kavanaugh and Kennedy.  The American Bar Association deemed him unqualified to be a Federal Judge because of no significant trial experience.  Senator McConnell had pushed hard for Walker’s confirmation.

On October 24, 2019, UofL separated itself from John Schnatter’s naming rights deal for Papa John’s Cardinal Stadium.  The news hit when the Cardinals had almost completed a $63.25-million expansion of the stadium, including a major upgrade to the Howard Schnellenberger Football Complex.