Kentucky Facts

The longest cave in the world is the 'Mammoth Cave System' in the USA at 560,000 mtrs deep!

There is a family with a genetic condition that makes their skin blue, who have been isolated in rural Kentucky for generations.

In 1876, there was a mysterious shower of meat that rained down from the sky for several minutes on a Kentucky town. It is now known as the Kentucky Meat Shower.

Floodwater covered most of Louisville, Kentucky, in January 1937, and there were not enough boats to rescue everyone downtown. In less than a day, a crew built a floating bridge about 1,800 feet long on empty whiskey barrels. An estimated 75,000 people walked across it to safety over the next four days.

Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is the longest cave system on Earth - over 400 miles of tunnels. In 1842, Dr. John Croghan moved 16 sick patients underground, convinced that cave air would cure their illness. At least five died inside. Nearly all the others died within weeks of leaving. The doctor died of the same disease in 1849.

Built in 1914, the Belle of Louisville was two days from the scrapyard in 1962. A Cincinnati reporter talked a judge into an auction. Jefferson County bought her and rebuilt her from the hull up. She is now the oldest operating Mississippi River-style steamboat on Earth. This April, at 112 years old, she out-distanced the Belle of Cincinnati to win the Great Steamboat Race. She still churns down the Ohio every week.

A chain-reaction crash on the Clark Memorial Bridge in Louisville sent a semi-truck dangling nearly 100 feet over the Ohio River with the driver trapped inside. Firefighter Bryce Carden, 29, was lowered by rope over the bridge edge, cut her free, harnessed her, and both were hoisted to safety. The whole rescue took 40 minutes.

Nurses on horseback delivered babies in the Kentucky mountains. With no roads, they forded rivers in the dark. Mountain children were told nurses carried babies in their saddlebags. A new baby usually arrived soon after a nurse's visit. In their first 1,000 births, not one mother died. The nation lost more than 5 mothers in every 1,000. The horses are gone now. Nurse-midwives are still there.