Harland Sanders was born on September 9, 1890, on a Henryville, Indiana farm. When Sanders was six, his father died. His mother was forced to go to work, and young Harland had to take care of his three-year-old brother and baby sister. This meant doing much of the family cooking. By the age of seven, he was a master of a score of regional dishes. At age 10, he 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, for a job on a farm in Greenwood, Indiana. He held a series of jobs over the next few years, first as a 15-year-old streetcar conductor in New Albany, Indiana, and then as a 16-year-old private, soldiering for six months in Cuba.

After that he was a railroad fireman, studied law by correspondence, practiced in justice of the peace courts, sold insurance, operated an Ohio River steamboat ferry, sold tires, and operated service stations. When he was 40, the Colonel began cooking for hungry travelers who stopped at his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. He didn't have a restaurant, but served folks on his own dining table in the living quarters of his service station. As more people started coming just for food, he moved across the street to a motel and restaurant that seated 142 people. Over the next nine years, he perfected his secret blend of 11 herbs and spices and the basic cooking technique that is still used today.

Sander's fame grew. Governor Ruby Laffoon made him a Kentucky Colonel in 1935 in recognition of his contributions to the state's cuisine. And in 1939, his establishment was first listed in Duncan Hines' "Adventures in Good Eating." 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. After paying his bills, he was reduced to living on his $105 Social Security checks.

After specializing for thirty years in the preparation of chicken, he finally patented a process for pressure frying. With the development of the interstate highway system, Sanders, at age 65, took to the road, traveling by car from city to city franchising his fried chicken recipe across the country (in 1952, Pete Harman in Salt Lake City became the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee). He traveled across the country 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. In 1960, his name was added to the American Restaurant’s Hall of Fame.

Business grew so rapidly and by 1964, Colonel Sanders had more than 600 franchised outlets for his chicken in the United States and Canada. That year, he sold his interest in the U.S. company for $2 million to a group of investors including John Y. Brown Jr. Under the new owners, Kentucky Fried Chicken Corporation grew rapidly. It went public on March 17, 1966, and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange on January 16, 1969. Colonel Sanders bought the first 100 shares.

The Colonel remained a public spokesman for the company. In 1976, an independent survey ranked the Colonel as the world's second most recognizable celebrity. Until the time he died, on December 16, 1980, from leukemia, at the age of 90, the Colonel traveled 250,000 miles a year visiting the KFC empire he founded. His body lay in state in the Kentucky State Capital rotunda and is buried in Louisville's Cave Hill cemetery.