Louisville: Interesting facts about the place I call home.

• Louisville was founded in 1778, only two years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
• The first player to have his name inscribed on a Louisville Slugger baseball bat was Honus Wagner, in 1905.
• Named for King Louis XVI, Louisville is one only of two major American cities named for someone who was executed. (...wouldn't you know, it had to be a Frenchman? ACK!) The other city is St. Paul, Minnesota.
• After months of planning, in October 1803, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark met in Louisville to begin their famous exploration of the American West.
• Louisville was a member of baseball's National League when it was founded in 1876 but the membership was brief; by 1878, a gambling scandal prompted the league to discard the Louisville Grays.
• You can choose from more than 130 varieties of bourbon at Bourbons Bistro, 2255 Frankfort Ave. It's one of the largest selections of the famous Kentucky whiskey in the world.
• The term "workaholic" was coined by a professor at the Southern Baptist Seminary in 1968.
• Author Charles Dickens visited Louisville twice. He once stayed at the old Galt House, where he later wrote that he had been "handsomely lodged."
• Elvis Presley's grandfather, Jesse D. Pressley -- yes, family members spelled it different ways -- lived in Louisville's South End. The King used to visit him frequently, until his immense fame made it too difficult.
• The University of Louisville was a private school until 1970, when it joined the state university system. (A shame it did... it's now a bastion of Liberal/Socialism here now.)
• Martha Layne Hall, the Kentucky Derby Festival Queen in 1959, went on to become Kentucky's first woman governor (as Martha Layne Collins).
• Legend has it that the 1980 NCAA champion University of Louisville men's basketball team was the first to popularize (if not invent) the "high five." Yo! High five!
• Louisville is home to the foremost producer of disco balls in the world, National Products on Baxter Avenue.
• Frederick Law Olmsted, designer of New York City's Central Park, also shaped Louisville's urban park system, including Cherokee, Iroquois, Shawnee, Central and Seneca parks.
• You can walk up to Churchill Downs on Derby Day and buy a grandstand ticket for the race - the next year's race, if you're lucky!
• Jim Porter (1810-59) was a real person, not just the name of a popular bar (Jim Porter's). Porter was a 7-foot-8 saloonkeeper whose immense size earned him the nickname "the Kentucky Giant."
• At 1.5 miles, Kart Kountry in Shepherdsville is the longest go-kart track in the world.
• Actors Theatre of Louisville was awarded a Tony in 1980 as an outstanding regional theater.
• The Frankfort Avenue Beer Depot, 3204 Frankfort Ave., has a nine-hole miniature golf course, which you can play for free (weather permitting).
• On Feb. 13, 1981, a sewer explosion caused several streets to collapse in Old Louisville. The blast injured four people and was blamed on a chemical leak from a nearby soybean processing plant. (What? Health food in Kentucky?!)
• Papa John's Pizza was started in a broom closet in a Jeffersonville tavern called Mick's Lounge in 1984. Founder John Schnatter sold his 1972 Camaro to finance the venture.
• Louisville's first Jewish congregation, Adas Israel, was chartered in 1843.
• Built in 1914, the Belle of Louisville is the oldest river steamboat still in operation in the U.S.
• Tom Cruise (nee Thomas Mapother) once worked at an ice cream shop in Louisville and wrestled at St. Xavier High School.
• In 1983, the Louisville Redbirds were the first minor league baseball team to draw more than 1 million fans in a season.
• One of the first large-scale demonstrations of Thomas Edison's fancy-schmancy incandescent light bulb was during the 1883 Southern Exposition in Louisville.
• The first enamel bathtub was made in Louisville in 1856.
• Oscar-winning screenwriter Stephen Gaghan wanted to include his hometown in the film "Traffic," but in the course of his research, he decided that Cincinnati's inner-city was more authentically seedy than Louisville's.
• The Kentucky Derby began in 1875, but it wasn't dubbed "The Run for the Roses" until 1925, when New York sports columnist Bill Corum gave it that famous nickname. Corum later served as track president.
• Jim James, lead singer/guitarist for My Morning Jacket, was born Jim Olliges in Louisville. His previous occupations include record store clerk and sandwich maker.
• The Kentucky State Fair is the most air-conditioned of any in the country. It has 1.2 million square feet of comfortable indoor space.
• Movie director Gus Van Zant ("Good Will Hunting," "My Own Private Idaho") was born in Louisville in 1952.
• The 1937 Ohio River flood devastated the city and killed 90 people. Some observers believe the lengthy recovery required by the disaster allowed Indianapolis and Cincinnati to pass Louisville on their way to becoming more prominent American cities. (I guess we couldn't blame FEMA back then, eh?)
• If you live in the East End of Louisville and want to scare your kids, tell them about the Pope Lick Monster, a half-man, half-goat creature that allegedly lives beneath the railroad trestle crossing Pope Lick Creek near Fisherville.
• In 1991, while here to perform with New Kids on the Block, actor Donnie Wahlberg (Marky Mark's brother) was arrested for setting fire to a carpet at the Seelbach Hotel. Charges were dismissed when he agreed to make a series of public services ads about alcohol and fire safety.
• The Old Fashioned -- a mixed drink consisting of bourbon, bitters, water, sugar, cherry and orange -- was invented at the Pendennis Club.
• In 1945, while much of America was still segregated and virulently racist, Eugene S. Clayton became the first African-American member of the Louisville Board of Aldermen.
• Athletes at Male High School sport an "H" on their jackets as a nod to the fact the school was once known simply as "High School."
• Louisville native Harvey Fuqua was a record producer who discovered Marvin Gaye and wrote or co-wrote a slew of classic Motown tunes, including the Supremes' "Someday We'll Be Together."
• The annual Trinity-St. Xavier game is billed as the largest high school football game in the country. Last year's tilt drew 38,500 fans to Papa's John's Cardinal Stadium.
• At one time, Louisville Slugger baseball bats were called Falls Cities Sluggers.
• One of Louisville's oddest couples is U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell(R-Ky.) and rock star Bono. McConnell befriended the U2 frontman over their shared interest in developing democracy around the world.
• Louisville's Caldwell Tanks Inc. has built water tanks in the shape of a giant ketchup bottle, a huge pair of Mickey Mouse ears and the familiar Old Forester bottle at the Brown-Forman plant in the West End of town.
• Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald was stationed at Camp Taylor in Louisville during World War I. In "The Great Gatsby," Louisville serves as the meeting place for characters Daisy Fay and Tom Buchanan, who celebrate their wedding at the Mulbach ( a.k.a. the Seelbach) Hotel.
• Famous thespians who have worked at Actors Theatre of Louisville include Holly Hunter, Kathy Bates, Delroy Lindo, Julianne Moore, Kevin Bacon, John Spencer ("The West Wing") and John Turturro.
• At 5,500 acres, Jefferson Memorial Forest in Fairdale is the largest urban forest in America. It sports more than 30 miles of hiking trails.
• Louisvillians are said to consume more fried cod (i.e., fish sandwiches) than any other inland city in America.
• From October 1960, when he turned pro, to March 1971, when he was beaten by Joe Frazier, Louisville's Muhammad Ali didn't lose a fight. He was 31-0 in that period.
• During the 1970s, you couldn't turn on a TV without seeing a game show hosted by a Louisvillian. Jack Narz ran the show at "Concentration" and "Tattletales," while his brother, Tom (Narz) Kennedy, hosted, among others, "Name That Tune" and "Break the Bank."
• Southeast Christian Church was formed in 1962 with only 55 members. It is now one of the biggest churches in America. (Locally, with tongue firmly in cheek, it's often called "Six Flags over Jesus.")
• There is a 3 million-square-foot cavern beneath the Louisville Zoo that is used to store items from sensitive financial records to medical supplies. The massive cavern is a former stone quarry.
• In 1964, Colonel Harland Sanders sold Kentucky Fried Chicken to a group of investors for $2 million. Seven years later, they sold it for $285 million.
• Abraham Lincoln's grandfather, who was also named Abraham Lincoln, lived on a farm in eastern Jefferson County until he was shot and killed by Indians in 1786.
• University of Louisville's Brandeis School of Law is named for Louis Brandeis (1856-1941), a Louisville native who served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939.
• In 1925, The Louisville Courier-Journal sponsored a spelling bee that later developed into the National Spelling Bee.
• Joseph P. Clayton, the chairman of Sirius Satellite Radio (and now Howard Stern's boss) is a 1971 graduate of Bellarmine University here in Louisville.
• The Hard Rock Cafe at Fourth Street Live has a pair of Elvis Presley's famous oversized sunglasses, complete with the King's teeth marks on them.
• After starring at University of Louisville, quarterback Johnny Unitas almost washed out in the NFL. Unitas played sandlot football for $6 a game before convincing the Baltimore Colts to take a chance on him.
• Pharmacist John Colgan is credited with making the first flavored chewing gum in 1873 in Louisville.
• The Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, which puts on plays every summer in Central Park, is the oldest free and independently operated Shakespeare festival in the country.
• Frank Sinatra was quite fond of the food at Vincenzo's restaurant, 150 S. Fifth St. He discovered the eatery while in town to perform; the dish Veal Sinatra was later named in his honor.
• Diane Sawyer began her TV career in 1967 as a weather reporter for local TV station WLKY-32.
• The Pamela Brown Auditorium at Actors Theatre is named for the actress who disappeared while attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a balloon in 1970.
• The James Graham Brown Cancer Center here in Louisville developed the first vaccine against cervical cancer.

Sources: The Encyclopedia of Louisville, The Courier-Journal archives, staff research. Thanks for sending this my way, Mark!