Colonel Harland Sanders has become a world-known figure by marketing his "finger lickin' good" Kentucky Fried Chicken. His chicken is now served daily across the United States as well as in more than eighty other countries. It is one of the largest fast food corporations in the world.
The spectacled Colonel Sanders could easily be identified by his clean, crsip white suite, black string tie, and walking cane. A statue of this man can be seen as far away as on Nathan Road in Kowloon, Hong Kong, for one place.
What makes Colonel Sanders' story so amazing, you might ask. One of the most amazing aspects of his life is the fact that when he reached the age of sixty-five years old, after running a restaurant for several years, Harland Sanders found himself penniless. He retired and received his first social security check which was for one hundred and five dollars. And that was just the beginning of his international fame and financial success story...
Harland Sanders was born in the month of September in the year of 1890. He was the oldest child in a family of five. His father toiled in the coal mines of Kentucky until his death, which came at a young age. Sanders had just reached the tender age of six years old when he had to take care of his younger brother and sister. With his father gone, that left the responsibilities of working and supoprting the family up to his mother. She began working in a shirt factory. Harland tended to things at home and learned to cook the meals by his mother's teachings. She taught him how to cook many foods, including fried chicken.
Over the next several years, Harland Sanders worked at a variety of jobs. He started out as a farm hand, then moved on to be a streetcar conductor while he was still just a teenager. From there he was a fireman on the railroad and finally ended up running a service station. Once again, he used his cooking skills that were learned from his mother to provide meals for travelers who stopped at his service station. As his cooking became more famous, and his food business grew, he moved into an actual restaurant nearby. His specialty was, of course, fried chicken which was seasoned with his original blend of eleven herbs and spices.
A few years later, in the year of 1935, when Sanders was forty-five years old, then Governor Ruby Laffoon made him a Kentucky Colonel because of his delectable cooking skills.
Progress is not always for the good of everyone, and in the 1950's, Colonel Harland Sanders got the news of the plans for a new highway which was going to be constructed. The highway could divert the majority of the traffic away from the town and, with the beginning of the highway, Colonel Sanders saw his successful business coming to an end. He closed the restaurant and retired to a social security check of one hundred and five dollars a month. When he received his first month's pension, he decided that he wasn't going to sit in a rocking chair and wait for the government checks. So, he convinced others to invest in his delicious fried chicken recipe, and Kentucky Fried Chicken was born.
Colonel Harland Sanders finally retired from the business when he was eighty years old, and stricken with illness.
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