Don’t insult Harland Sanders that way. He was a real man, not like the rest of the fast food mascots. Colonel wasn’t a marketing term either, he was a real Kentucky Colonel, and he was awarded that honor long before starting KFC. He got it for outstanding humanitarianism.

For a long read about this amazing man’s full life, try here: https://www.damninteresting.com/colonels-of-truth/

One day in the early 1930s, Josephine and Margaret Sanders were beginning to wonder what was keeping Harland away so long. Last they had seen him, he was riding a mule up the mountain in a downpour, carrying an old lard bucket filled with bandages, scissors, antiseptics, and rubber gloves. He was en route to a nearby Appalachian community which lacked electricity, roads, indoor plumbing, and other modern conveniences. From time to time Sanders brought the families there free food, including full Thanksgiving spreads for entire towns, but most urgently the people needed medical care. He had been summoned because one of the townswomen had gone into labor. Having three children, Sanders had a little experience with childbirth, so he had become a self-styled amateur midwife. But this outing was taking much longer than normal.

Harland interrupted his wife and daughter’s worrying when he burst into the apartment and grabbed his trusty shotgun he kept behind the front door. He explained that it might be necessary to use a little “persuasion.” The baby wasn’t in the proper position in the womb, requiring more experienced intervention. But the allegedly drunken doctor was refusing to go, Hippocrates be damned. Shortly the doctor was appropriately persuaded, and he was seen riding up the mountain astride a wet mule. The doctor manually adjusted the baby’s position, and the delivery proceeded smoothly. The parents named their new son “Harland.”

In 1935 or 1936, in recognition of Sanders’ midwifery work, food donations, and his regular shuttling of townsfolk to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings2, Kentucky governor Ruby Laffoon commissioned Harland Sanders as a “Kentucky Colonel,” the highest title of honor bestowed by the Commonwealth of Kentucky.