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TODAY KENTUCKY HISTORY

On September 16, 1874, feuding between the Little and Strong clans caused Governor Preston H. Leslie to send 60 state militia members to Jackson.  Fast forward to the November 1878 election, and it rekindled hostilities which caused Governor James B. McCreary to order troops again from December 1878 to February 1879.  In the early twentieth century, the Hargis-Marcum feud gave the county the tag “Bloody Breathitt.”

Localtonians wish a Happy Birthday to Fern Creek native Marvin Hart, also known as the “Fightin’ Kentuckian” or “Louisville Plumber,” born in 1876.  Marvin was the World Heavyweight Boxing Champion from 1905 to 1906 and the 1st of four Kentuckians to hold the title.

September 16, 1931, Policeman William Turner, Wheelwright Police Department, died from a gunshot by a Floyd County Sheriff’s Deputy on a store’s porch.  Officer Turner arrested him earlier in the week for being drunk.

September 16, 1939, Deputy Sheriff Fred Adams, Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, died from a gunshot while breaking up a fight at a local beer parlor.

September 16, 1951, what appeared to be an image of Jesus turned up in an aerial picture purportedly taken over Korea by an Air Force man.  Ashland’s Independent published the photograph and sold out every copy.

September 16, 1951, Constable James Combs, Letcher County Constable’s Office, suffered a fatal heart attack after two men fired several rounds at him in Isom. 

September 16, 1951, a Lagrange Reformatory prisoner, thwarted in a prison escape, plunged 40 feet to his death rather than give up.  Three other men made a clean escape while visiting a Highview church as gospel singers.  This was the prison’s 3rd escape in seven days.

September 16, 1952, Marine Corps PFC Clifton Brandenburg from Winchester, died while fighting in the Korean War.

September 16, 1964, Chief of Police Harold Lewis Catron, Sr., Somerset Police Department, succumbed to wounds received from a shotgun blast in 1957.  Three suspects shot Chief Catron in front of his house.

September 16, 1969, Army CPL Kenneth Wayne Pease from Hickory in Graves County, died while fighting in the Vietnam War.

September 16, 1970, the Kentucky Air Pollution Control Commission unveiled a clean air plan that would introduce Kentucky’s 1st limit on the sulfur content of coal used as fuel.  The limits reduce corrosive sulfur oxides in the air.

September 16, 1975, Northern Kentucky State College President W. Frank Steely resigned, ending another stormy chapter in the controversies surrounding the five-year-old college and the fifty-year-old Steely.

Kentucky Trivia: Northern Kentucky University (NKU) began in 1948 when an extension campus for UK opened in Covington, known as the UK Northern Extension Center.  After 20 years in operation, it became an autonomous four-year college under the name Northern Kentucky State College (NKSC).  In 1970, the school hired Dr. W. Frank Steely as the 1st president.

September 16, 1996, Kentucky Senator Barry Metcalf (Richmond) not only asked the Legislative Research Commission to draft a bill calling for research on industrial hemp, but talked at length about the plant afterward.  He also made it clear he was no “Gatewood” and opposed marijuana.  Barry was ahead of his time but did he have to knock the pioneer to get his point across?

September 16, 1996, Terrence Wade Wilcutt from Russellville was aboard the STS-79 Atlantis when it launched from Kennedy Space Center.  The crew transferred over 3.5 tons of supplies to and from the Mir Space Station and exchanged U.S. astronauts on Mir for the first time, leaving John Blaha and bringing Shannon Lucid home after her record six months stay.  The flight duration was 10 days, 3 hours, 18 minutes, traveling 3.9 million miles in 159 orbits of the Earth.

September 16, 2003, UK announced that it would stop coal mining in the 14,000-acre Robinson Forest it owns in Eastern Kentucky.  President Lee Todd also pledged to raise money another way to continue the scholarship program, funded by the mining.

September 16, 2005, Army SGT Matthew L. Deckard, 29, of Elizabethtown was killed by a bomb in Baghdad fighting in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

On September 16, 2008, Nicholasville marked its 210th birthday.  The Founders’ Day celebration served a cake and displayed over 100 historical pictures of the city’s heritage.  On this day in 1798, the founding locals laid out the roads that led to Harrodsburg, Lexington, and Danville.

September 16, 2008, the U.S. Government bought the American International Group (AIG) Inc. for $85 billion.  The company had insured trillions of dollars of mortgages worldwide, and the global banking system would have fallen if it had fallen.  AIG took risks with cash from supposedly ultra-safe insurance policies and used it to boost profits by offering unregulated credit default swaps.  It didn’t have enough cash on hand to pay out all the redemptions that were occurring.  President Bush and future President Obama would ensure their friends were cared for.

September 16, 2012, Police Officer Mark Allen Taulbee, Hodgenville Police Department, was killed in a single-vehicle crash while pursuing a vehicle along Campbellsville Road, in LaRue County.

September 16, 2015, Kentucky state officials announced they were evaluating a roadside drug test that could monitor impaired drivers.  According to 2015 Kentucky stats, driving high kills more than 200 people a year.

Convicted swindler David G. Rose signed an agreement on September 16, 2015, in federal court in Eastern Tennessee, where he pleaded guilty to one count of fraud in exchange for the dismissal of other counts against him.  He already served 52 months for ripping people off in 2009.

September 16, 2017, Muhammad Ali’s boyhood home on Grand Avenue closed its doors.  The museum opened a few days before Ali passed away.  The key investor in the project, a boxing fan turned lawyer said at the closing he was extremely disappointed and wanted to move the home to Las Vegas.

September 16, 2017, Woodbine ran their GI $340,800 Northern Dancer Turf Stakes for three-year-olds and upward and a nose separates the top two finishers.

On September 16, 2019, while over 46,000 General Motors (GM) workers went on strike, congress investigated Mitch McConnell’s wife for conflict of interest.  GM’s Bowling Green plant employees about 1,200 hourly employees.

September 16, 2020, the “Journey to Equality: Social Justice March and Unity Fair” from W.T. Library to the Memorial Coliseum took place as part of the ongoing social justice movement across the country.  Meanwhile, the governor reported eight new deaths while President Trump and the CDC provided different times for the experimental vaccine to be available.  Trump told America it would be ready before the elections, and the CDC said after the election.

The governor’s September 16, 2021, daily briefing promoted the experimental vaccine.  First, he seemed to blame the unvaccinated for filling up Kentucky’s hospital and ICU beds.  Next, he focused on young people, the least vaccinated age group, by stating that younger Kentuckians were dying more frequently.  One person under 12 died in Kentucky during the entire pandemic. “For younger people, this is only going to get worse,” said Beshear.  It never got worse.

On September 16, 2022, the federal government, at the behest of Pfizer, began pushing the annual vaccine for the coronavirus.

On September 16, 2023, Governor A. Beshear handed out more money, this time to Woodford County who received $939,000. Socialism has always played an important role for incumbents. The governor gave $2.5 million to Trigg County a day earlier.