Your Guide to
Shelby County Living

Kentucky's most famous soft drink got its name from a contest. Ale-8-One, the ginger and citrus soda from Winchester, was invented by G.L. Wainscott in 1926. After perfecting the formula he'd discovered on a trip to northern Europe, he needed a catchy name. He held a contest at the Clark County Fair, and a young girl submitted the winning entry: "A Late One," which was 1920s slang for "the latest thing." The name stuck, and the iconic green bottle has been a Kentucky staple ever since. Wainscott was no stranger to the soda business. He started his company in 1902 after becoming fascinated with a carbonation machine. His first big hit was a cola called Roxa-Kola, named after his wife, Roxanne. That success drew a lawsuit from the country's biggest cola company. In a true David vs. Goliath story, Wainscott fought back and won, not only the lawsuit but the appeal as well. That victory gave him the freedom to continue experimenting, which led directly to his signature ginger-based creation. The secret recipe for Ale-8-One is one of Kentucky's most closely guarded treasures. For over a century, it has been passed down through four generations of Wainscott's family. Today, his great-great-nephew, Fielding Rogers, is the one who carries on the tradition. He is the only person who knows the secret formula, and he mixes every single batch by hand in a special, hidden room, following his great-great-uncle's handwritten notes. That personal touch is what makes Ale-8-One so unique. Every bottle of Ale-8 that goes out into the world starts in that secret room, mixed in small batches by a member of the founding family. It's a tradition that has kept the company independent and the flavor consistent for nearly 100 years. From a county fair contest to a statewide icon, Ale-8-One remains a true Kentucky original, bottled with a story in every sip.

Tsutomu Yamaguchi was 29 years old and on a three-month business trip for Mitsubishi in Hiroshima. August 6, 1945, was supposed to be his last day in the city before returning home to his wife and infant son in Nagasaki. At 8:15 AM, while walking to the shipyard, he saw an American B-29 drop a small object. The sky erupted in a flash of light, and the blast threw him into a potato patch, rupturing his eardrums and severely burning his upper body. After a night in a bomb shelter, Yamaguchi navigated a horrifying landscape of fire and death to reach a still-operating train station. He boarded a train packed with other burned and bewildered survivors for the overnight journey home. He arrived in Nagasaki on August 8, so badly wounded that his own mother thought he was a ghost. Despite his injuries and a raging fever, he reported to his Mitsubishi office on the morning of August 9 to report on the events in Hiroshima. Around 11 AM, Yamaguchi was in a meeting with his director, trying to explain the unbelievable devastation he had witnessed. His boss was skeptical, declaring that a single bomb could not possibly destroy an entire city. As Yamaguchi struggled to make him understand, the room was lit by another blinding white flash. The second atomic bomb had detonated over Nagasaki. "I thought the mushroom cloud had followed me from Hiroshima," he later said. The building's reinforced structure saved him from the immediate blast, and he survived his second nuclear explosion in three days. Despite the double dose of radiation, which he said "seemed to have canceled each other out," Tsutomu Yamaguchi lived a long life. He and his wife, who also suffered from radiation poisoning from the Nagasaki blast, had two more children. He became a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons later in life, speaking at the United Nations and with international visitors. He died of stomach cancer in 2010 at the age of 93. He is the only person officially recognized by the government of Japan as having survived both atomic bombings—a man who stood in the heart of two nuclear infernos and walked out twice.

Colonel Harland Sanders is linked forever to Shelbyville, Kentucky. After the interstate plan crushed traffic to his Corbin cafe in the mid 1950s, he shifted his base. By 1956 he had moved his company headquarters to Shelbyville to better reach franchisees with spices, pressure cookers, and cartons. In 1959 he and his wife Claudia settled into Blackwood Hall on U S 60, using it as home and office while he worked the road to promote Kentucky Fried Chicken. From Shelbyville he became the face of the brand. News profiles and biographies describe an older Sanders who crisscrossed the country to open stores, film ads, and lecture franchise cooks. That public push grew the chain far beyond Kentucky. The town also became part of the story of Claudia herself. In 1968 the couple opened a separate restaurant there called The Colonel's Lady, later known as the Claudia Sanders Dinner House. It served family meals and southern sides. It was not a KFC, but it kept the Sanders name active in Shelby County. Local talk is mixed about the man. Many remember a generous figure who posed for photos and cut ribbons. Others recall a sharp tongue and a quick temper. That part is not rumor. In 1975 he blasted the company's gravy in a Louisville paper as wallpaper paste and criticized a newer chicken coating. He had already sold the corporation in 1964, but he never stopped speaking his mind about quality. Shelbyville also gets pulled into the long running fascination with the secret recipe. In 2016 a Chicago newspaper printed a handwritten list of 11 herbs and spices from a family scrapbook shown by a nephew. KFC did not confirm that it was the real thing. The dinner house and Blackwood Hall keep the memory alive either way. When Sanders died in 1980, he was buried in Louisville at Cave Hill Cemetery, a short drive from the Shelby County places where he built his final chapter.