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A list of past quotes and facts from our home page.
QUOTES
FACTS
Humor

"Keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to
eat them."                                                      ~ Anonymous

"A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's. She changes it
more often."                                             ~ Oliver Herford

Laughter is medicine to my bones."      ~Abraham Lincoln

"Live so that you wouldn't mind selling your pet parrot to
the town gossip."                          ~ Will Rogers (1879 - 1935)

"The thing that impresses me most about America is the
way parents obey their children."
            ~Duke of Windsor, 1957

"Good manners consist of doing precisely what everyone
thinks should be done, especially when no one knows
quite what that is."
~P.J. O'Rourke Modern Manners, (1988)

Inspiration

"Two roads diverged in the woods, and I -- I took the one
less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."
                   ~ Robert Frost

"Without a struggle, there can be no progress."
          ~ Frederick Douglass

"If you don't have the best of everything, make the best of
everything that you have."                            ~ Anonymous

"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow."
                                              ~ Anonymous

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every
time we fall."                                                     ~Confucius

"When we seek to discover the best in others, we
somehow bring out the best in ourselves."
          ~ William Arthur Ward

"It is in vain to  expect our prayers to be heard,  if we do
not strive as well as pray."
~Aesop, "Hercules and the Waggoner,"Fables  (6th c. B.C.)

"What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul?"
            ~The Bible Mark 8:36

"He that communicates his secret to another makes himself
that other's slave."
~ Balatsar Gracian, "The Art of Wordly Wisdom," 1647

"Never look down on anybody unless you're helping them
up."
~ Rev. Jesse Jackson

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every
purpose under the heaven."

~ The Bible, Ecclesiastes 3:1

"Eloquence lies as much in the tone of the voice,in the
eyes, and in the speaker's manner, as in his choice of
words."
~La Rochefoucauld, "Maxims" 1665

"True courage is not the absence of fear; rather it is the
taking of action in spite of the fear."
                                  ~ Anonymous

"True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said,
and that only"
~ La Rochefoucauld,  Maxims, 1665

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the
stars."

       ~Oscar Wilde, Lady Wndermere's Fan, 1892

Life

"In every age of well-marked transition there is the pattern
of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing,
and there is oncoming a new complex of habit."
~Alfred North Whitehead  "Adventures of Ideas," 1933

"We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we
know the path which has led us to the present."
             ~Adlai Stevenson, Sept. 1952

"There is nothing which we receive with so much
reluctance as advice."                    ~Joseph Addison, 1711

"Living well and beautifully and justly are all one thing."
 ~Socrates, 4th century B.C.

"All the great things are simple, and many can be
expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty;
mercy; hope.
         ~Sir Winston Churchill

"What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world,
and lose his own soul?"
          ~The Bible Mark 8:36

"The only gift is a portion of thyself."
      ~Emerson, "Gifts"  1844

"Evidence of trust begets trust, and love is reciprocated by
love."
          ~Plutarch, c. A.D. 100

"Life is a great surprise.  I do not see why death should not
be an even greater one."
       ~Vladimir Nabokov, 1962

"The only rock I know that stays steady, the only institution
I know that works, is the family."
                 ~Lee Iacocca,1988

"The man who does something under orders is not
unhappy; he is unhappy who does something against his
will."
~Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 1st century

"The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is
everything if you want to succeed in business -- or almost
anywhere else, for that matter.
~Lee Iacocca, "Iacocca: An Autobiography" 1984

"The reason we have two ears and only one mouth is that
we may listen the more and talk the less."
                ~Zeno of Citium, c.300 B.C.

"When evil acts in the world it always manages to find
instruments who believe that what they do is not evil but
honorable."
                            ~Max Lerner, 1959

"All doors open to courtesy."
        ~ Thomas Fuller, M.D. 1732

"The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the
only thing that the free man makes for himself and by
himself."

~G.K. Chesterton Dramatic Unities, 1923

Mankind

Man, when perfected, is the best of animals, but, when
separated from law and justice, he is the worst of all."
    ~Aristotle  4th Century B.C

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in
moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of
challenge."                                                                             
                                                       ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

"There is such a thing as man being too proud to fight.  
There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does
not need to convince others by force that it is right."
      ~Woodrow Wilson, 1915

"Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength."
~ Eric Hoffer, 1951

The first test of a truly great man is his humility."    
~John Ruskin "Modern Painters" 1843-1860

"Collective crimes incriminate no one."
~Napoleon I,  "Maxims" (1804-1815)

Military

"A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his
country is good enough to be given a square deal
afterwards."                            ~ Theodore Roosevelt, 1903
.
Politics

"To make democracy work, we must be a nation of
participants, not simply observers.  One who does not vote
has no right to complain."                  ~Louis L'Amour 1989

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we
falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we
destroyed ourselves."                                     ~Abraham Lincoln

"What higher obligation does a President have than to
explain his intentions to the people and persuade them
that the direction he wishes to go is right?"
~Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., April, 1993

"All politics are based on the indifference of the majority."
         ~James Reston, 1968

"How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings
they are in possession of, and which no other people on
earth enjoy!"                                      ~ Thomas Jefferson

"Nobody has a more sacred obligation to obey the law than
those who make the law."
  ~Jean Anouilh, Antigone, 1942

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They
are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our
liberty."
              ~Thomas Jefferson
Lewis County

Only 57% of registered voters in Lewis County actually
vote.  (Compared to the US average of 71%)

Concord, in the northwest part of the county, is Kentucky's
smallest city, incorporated in 1830 with a population of
about 400. It was also home to the county's first
newspaper, The Concord Pioneer, published in 1850.

Kentucky

Kentucky is the state where both Abraham Lincoln,
President of the Union, and Jefferson Davis, President of
the Confederacy, were born. They were born less than
one hundred miles and one year apart.

Mammoth Cave is the world's longest cave and was first
promoted in 1816, making it the second oldest tourist
attraction in the United States. Niagara Falls, New York is
first.

Around April 13, 1750, Dr. Thomas Walker was the first
recorded person to discover and use coal in Kentucky.  In
1820 the first commercial mine, known as the "McLean drift
bank" opened in Kentucky, near the Green River and
Paradise in Muhlenberg County; and we have been mining
coal ever since.

Kentucky is home to five National parks:


The U.S. Treasury Gold Vault was established at Fort Knox
in 1936. During World War II, Kentucky began to shift from
an agricultural to an industrial economy, but it was not until
1970 that the state had more urban than rural dwellers.
Tourism developed into a major industry, aided by an
impressive state park system and new highways across the
state.

The Kentucky State Fair attracted over 600,000 visitors in
2008.  This year's event runs August 20 through 30 in
Louisville.

In the War of 1812 more than half of all Americans killed in
action were Kentuckians.

Mammoth Cave, with 336+ miles of mapped passages, is
the world's longest cave. It is 379 feet deep and contains
at least 5 levels of passages. It's second only to Niagara
Falls as the most popular tourist attraction in the US . It
became a National Park in 1941.

Pike County, the world's largest producer of coal, is
famous for the Hatfield-McCoy feud, an Appalachian
vendetta that lasted from the Civil War to the 1890s.

History

On February 3, 1913, the 16th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution was ratified, giving the federal government the
power to impose and collect taxes on income.

In December 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling
banning the segregation of Montgomery’s public transit
vehicles went into effect. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and
Rosa Parks were among the first people to ride an
integrated bus, ending the historic, year-long Montgomery
bus boycott.  Martin Luther King, Jr.'s  birthday is January
19.

On January 10, 1911, the world’s first aerial photograph
was taken from an airplane over San Francisco.

On January 12, 1896, Dr. Henry Louis Smith took the first
X-ray picture.

On January 18, 1944, the first jazz concert was performed
in Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

On January 21, 1908, a law was passed in New York City
making it illegal for women to smoke in public.

In 1941, China formally issued a declaration of war against
Japan, Germany and Italy, joining the United States after
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

In the Declaration of Independence as first written by
Thomas Jefferson, there was a clause abolishing slavery.
Because of popular pressure, however, Jefferson deleted
the clause.

According to the Gregorian calendar, July is the seventh
month. On the Roman calendar, it was the fifth month and
it was called 'Quintilis', meaning 'fifth'. Julius Caesar gave
the month 31 days in 46 B.C. The Roman Senate named it
'Julius', in honor of Caesar.

Ice cream sundaes were created when it became illegal to
sell ice cream with flavored soda on Sundays in Evanston,
Illinois, during the late 19th century. Some traders got
around it by serving it with syrup instead, calling it an "Ice
Cream Sunday" and eventually replacing the final 'y' with
an 'e' to avoid upsetting religious leaders.

Holidays

In the United States over 1 billion valentine cards are sent
each year.
Valentine's Day is celebrated in the United States,
Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France and
Australia.
Parents get 1 out of every 5 valentines.
Women buy 85% of all valentines.

In many countries, it is the custom to wish friends a "Happy
Birthday" on January 1st, rather than a "Happy New Year."  
This day is nicknamed "Everyman's Birthday," and is
considered the day when everyone becomes a year older,
whether it's their actual day of birth or not.

1) Despite being “unofficially” celebrated almost since the
beginning, the 4th of July was not officially made America’s
national holiday until the 1940’s.

2) Declaration of Independence signer Benjamin Harrison
was the father and great-grandfather of presidents William
Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison.

3) Although “Uncle Sam” came to be associated with the U.
S. Government, and specifically the 4th of July, as early as
the 1810’s, Uncle Sam did not become America’s national
symbol until the 1960’s.

4) There is no legitimate evidence to suggest that Betsy
Ross actually sewed the first American flag.

5) “America the Beautiful” was composed on the 4th of July
in 1895 by a college professor named Katharine Lee.

6) July 2, 1776, was actually the day that independence
was declared from Great Britain, as part of a resolution
passed by Congress on that day. On that day, John
Adams declared that July 2nd would go down in history as
America’s day of independence.

7) Only John Hancock, who was President of the
Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence on July
4, 1776. The others did not sign until the following month.

8) 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence,
representing leaders from all 13 colonies. Pennsylvania
had the most representatives with 10; Rhode Island had
the fewest, with only 2.

9) Six men named William signed the Declaration of
Independence; there were also six Johns, six Thomases,
and six Georges. Other first names of signers included
Lyman, Button, and Caesar.

10) “The Star Spangled Banner” is set to a tune that was
originally a British drinking song, sung in pubs throughout
England.

11) A committee selected the eagle as the national bird of
the United States. Benjamin Franklin served on this
committee (along with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson)
and is notable because he argued fiercely for the national
bird to be the turkey.

12) On July 4, 1054 – some 700 years before the
Declaration of Independence – Chinese and Arab
astronomers recorded the explosion of a bright supernova
in the sky, which continued to be visible for several months.

13) The United States Military Academy at West Point
opened its doors on July 4, 1802.

14) Folk writer Stephen Foster, famous for his songs of
Americana, was born on the Fourth of July, 1826.

15) Two signers of the Declaration of Independence later
became president: Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
Strangely enough, both these statesmen died on July 4,
1826, within hours of each other (this was the same day
Stephen Foster was born). 1826 was also the 50th
anniversary of the document’s adoption, and thus a major
historical milestone. A third president, James Monroe (who
was not a signer of the Declaration of Independence) also
died on July 4th, in 1831.

Virtually all present Halloween traditions can be traced to
the ancient Celtic day of the dead, called Samhain
(pronounced Sah-ween).  The wearing of costumes, for
instance, and roaming from door to door demanding treats
can be traced to the Celtic period and the first few
centuries of the Christian era, when it was thought that the
souls of the dead were out and around, along with fairies,
witches, and demons. Offerings of food and drink were left
out to placate them. To this day, witches, ghosts, and
skeleton figures of the dead are among the favorite
disguises for trick-or-treating. Halloween also retains some
features that harken back to the original harvest holiday of
Samhain, such as the customs of bobbing for apples and
carving vegetables, as well as the fruits, nuts, and spiced
cider associated with the day.

In 1954, President Eisenhower signed a bill claiming
November 11 as Veterans Day to honor all who had fought
in American wars.  It had formerly been known as Armistice
Day (armistice means truce).

Today, Veteran’s Day is observed the United States to
thank everyone, dead or alive, who has honorably served
in the U.S. armed forces during times of peace and war,
although it is greatly intended for living veterans,
according to the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs.

Veterans account for about 13% of the population of the
U.S.
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