• Disclaimer: I knew nothing about him until this moment other than his image at KFC restaurants.

    A short wiki search comes up with Kentucky Colonel which is an order of merit given by the state of Kentucky. This is a real award given by Kentucky, and Sanders legitimately received it.

  • Huh?

    Where’s the conspiracy theory?

    A Kentucky colonel is a thing, and it’s been around much longer than Sanders. Nor has it ever been a secret that’s what he was, rather than a military officer.

    Or is this a joke post?

    If not, I’m really interested in the conspiracy theory because I’ve never run across it at all, despite having seen a lot, including a couple of documentaries and short form videos, about Sanders over the years.

    • I only heard about the Kentucky Colonel thing today while browsing wikipedia. I thought it was interesting that he was never in the military, and I wanted to post about it. I thought it might be funny to call it a conspiracy theory as a little bit of a prank, but Lemmy users are too smart to fall for My tricks, so I’ve removed the prank from the post.

      • Gotcha! No worries lol

        The whole Kentucky colonel thing is weird as hell tbh. Folks there treat it seriously, but also like a long running joke as well, so it wouldn’t have surprised me if a conspiracy had grown up around it. I’m almost disappointed there wasn’t lol

  • From Wikipedia

    In 1930, the Shell Oil Company offered Sanders a service station in North Corbin, Kentucky, rent-free, in return for paying the company a percentage of sales.

    Sanders began to serve chicken dishes and other meals such as country ham and steaks. Initially he served the customers in his adjacent living quarters before opening a restaurant.

    It was during this period that Sanders was involved in a shootout with Matt Stewart, a local competitor who had painted over a sign directing traffic to Sanders’s station. Stewart killed a Shell employee who was with Sanders, and was convicted of murder, eliminating Sanders’s competition.