Colonel Sanders' Crazy Real-Life Story

This is Colonel Sanders' crazy real-life story. Creating the juggernaut that is KFC wasn't the only fascinating thing he did. Here’s the man behind the 11 herbs and spices and that iconic white suit.

According to a profile in The New Yorker from 1970, Harland Sanders had a hard go of it from a young age following his birth outside Henryville, Indiana, in 1890. He was raised by an ultra-religious mother who taught him that alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and playing cards were all equally poisonous. After his mother got married to a man who wasn't so keen on the idea of stepchildren, so starting at the age of 12, Sanders had to go make his own way in the world.

He worked on a farm while going to school, and when that got too hard, he quit school just two weeks into seventh grade. Over the next three decades of his life, he worked as a streetcar conductor and railroad fireman, studied law by mail, acted as a midwife, operated a steamboat ferry, and even more – mostly failing at all these things.

In the meantime, Sanders got married at age 18 and had three children. As Sanders' autobiography recounts, after Sanders got fired from the railroad, his wife left and went to her parents in Alabama. Sanders planned — and failed — to kidnap his own children, and instead reluctantly reconciled with his wife. The couple would eventually divorce, nearly 40 years later. Keep watching to learn more about Colonel Sanders' Crazy Real-Life Story!

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A poor, rural, Southern early life | 0:00
A gas station shoot-out | 1:08
The origins of the Colonel | 2:01
Famous because of Duncan Hines | 2:55
The first KFC...in Utah | 3:49
Brand ambassador at age 73 | 4:53
20 years of the white suit | 6:02
He came to hate KFC food | 7:01
He got sued by KFC and lost | 8:17
Curse of the Colonel | 9:16

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