Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of the original Kentucky Fried Chicken, was born on September 9, 1890.

When he was six, his father died. His mother was forced to work and young Sanders had to take care of his three-year-old brother and baby sister. This meant doing much of the family cooking. By the time he was seven, Harland Sanders was a master of a range of regional dishes.

At the age of 10, young Sanders got his first job, working on a nearby farm for $2 a month. When he was 12, his mother remarried and he left his home near Henryville, Indiana, for a job on another farm in Greenwood, Ind. After a series of jobs, in the mid 1930s at the age of forty, Colonel Sanders bought a service station where he began serving meals to travelers. It was here that Sanders began experimenting with different seasonings to add flavour to his chicken, which travelers loved and for which he soon became famous. As more people started coming just for food, he moved across the street to a motel and café. Over the next 9 years, he perfected his secret blend of 11 herbs and spices and the basic cooking technique that is still used today.

In 1935, he was made a Kentucky Colonel for his contributions to the state's cuisine.

In the early 1950s, a new interstate highway was planned to bypass the town of Corbin. Seeing an end to his business, the Colonel auctioned off his operations.

Confident of the quality of his fried chicken, the Colonel devoted himself to the chicken franchising business. He traveled across the country by car from restaurant to restaurant, cooking batches of chicken for restaurant owners and their employees. If the reaction was favourable, he entered into a handshake agreement on a deal that stipulated a payment to him of a nickel for each chicken the restaurant sold. By 1964, Colonel Sanders had more than 600 franchised outlets for his chicken in the United States and Canada. Later that year, he sold his interest in the U.S. operations for $2 million to a group of investors but he remained a public spokesman for the company.

In 1976, the Colonel was ranked as the world’s second most recognisable celebrity.

In 1980, sadly Colonel Harland Sanders passed away on December 16th at the age of 90. KFC today stretches worldwide with more than 9,000 stores in 86 countries serving the Colonel’s Original Recipe.