Clay County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. As of the 2020 census, the county population was 20,345. Its county seat is Manchester. The county was formed in 1807 and named in honor of Green Clay (1757–1826). Clay was a member of the Virginia and Kentucky State legislatures, first cousin once removed of Henry Clay, U.S. Senator from Kentucky and Secretary of State in the 19th century.
Manchester is a home rule-class city in Clay County, Kentucky, in the United States. It is the seat of its county and the home of a minimum- and medium-security federal prison. The city's population was 1,255 at the 2010 census.
Julian Morton Carroll was an American lawyer and politician from the state of Kentucky. A Democrat, he served as the 54th governor of Kentucky from 1974 to 1979, succeeding Wendell H. Ford, who resigned to accept a seat in the U.S. Senate. He was most recently a member of the Kentucky Senate, representing Anderson, Franklin, Woodford, Gallatin, and Owen counties. He was the first Kentucky governor from the state's far-western Jackson Purchase region. Thelma Stovall, who served as lieutenant governor with him, was the first woman to be elected lieutenant governor of Kentucky.
Ernest Lee Fletcher is an American physician and politician who was the 60th governor of Kentucky from 2003 to 2007. He previously served three consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives before resigning after being elected governor. A member of the Republican Party, Fletcher was a family practice physician and a Baptist lay minister and is the second physician to be elected Governor of Kentucky; the first was Luke P. Blackburn in 1879. He was also the first Republican governor of Kentucky since Louie Nunn left office in 1971.
Wendell Hampton Ford was an American politician from Kentucky. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as Governor of Kentucky from 1971 to 1974, a member of the United States Senate for 24 years from 1974 to 1999. He was the first person to be successively elected lieutenant governor, governor, and United States senator in Kentucky history. He was the Senate Democratic whip from 1991 to 1999, and was considered the leader of the state's Democratic Party from his election as governor in 1971 until he retired from the Senate in 1999. At the time of his retirement he was the longest-serving senator in Kentucky's history, a mark which was then surpassed by Mitch McConnell in 2009. Ford is the last Democrat to have served as a Senator from the state of Kentucky.
Colonel Martha Layne Collins is an American former businesswoman and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky; she served as the state's 56th governor from 1983 to 1987, the first woman to hold the office and the only one to date. Prior to that, she served as the 48th Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, under John Y. Brown Jr. Her election made her the highest-ranking Democratic woman in the U.S. She was considered as a possible running mate for Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in the 1984 presidential election, but Mondale chose Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro instead.
Kentucky Educational Television (KET) is a statewide television network serving the U.S. commonwealth of Kentucky, a member of PBS. It is operated by the Kentucky Authority for Educational Television, an agency of the Kentucky state government, which provides more than half of its annual funding. KET is the dominant public broadcaster in the commonwealth, with transmitters covering the vast majority of the state as well as parts of adjacent states; the only other PBS member in Kentucky is WKYU-TV in Bowling Green. KET is the largest PBS state network in the United States; the broadcast signals of its sixteen stations cover almost all of the state, as well as parts of Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The network's offices, network center, and primary studio facilities are located at the O. Leonard Press Telecommunications Center on Cooper Drive in Lexington; KET also has production centers in Louisville and at the Kentucky State Capitol Annex in Frankfort.
WKYT-TV is a television station in Lexington, Kentucky, United States, affiliated with CBS and The CW. The station is owned by Gray Television, and maintains studios and transmitter facilities on Winchester Road near I-75 on the east side of Lexington. In addition to WKYT-TV, Gray owns WYMT-TV in Hazard, Kentucky, a separate CBS affiliate serving eastern Kentucky with its own syndicated programming inventory and local newscasts.
Fayette County Public Schools is a school district based in Lexington, Kentucky (U.S.).
Henry Clay High School is an American public high school in Lexington, Kentucky. Opened on Main Street in 1928, it was named in honor of the Kentuckian and United States statesman, Henry Clay. The Main Street location now houses the main offices of the Fayette County Public Schools system. The school was ranked in 2022 by U.S. News & World Report as #18 of schools in Kentucky and #1,705 nationally. The school's facility on Fontaine Road opened in 1970.
Bertram Thomas Combs was an American jurist and politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. After serving on the Kentucky Court of Appeals, he was elected the 50th Governor of Kentucky in 1959 on his second run for the office. Following his gubernatorial term, he was appointed to serve as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Lyndon B. Johnson, serving from 1967 to 1970.
Richard Dwight Farmer Jr. is an American former collegiate basketball player and Republican Party politician from the U.S. state of Kentucky. He served as the Kentucky Commissioner of Agriculture from 2004 to 2012 and was the running mate of David L. Williams in the 2011 gubernatorial election. After leaving office, Farmer was investigated for violating state campaign finance laws and misappropriating state resources and was sentenced to 27 months in federal prison along with a concurrent 12 months in state prison.
Hopkinsville High School is a four-year public high school located in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, with over 1,000 students. It is operated by the Christian County Public Schools school district.
Interstate 75 (I-75) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs 1,786.47 miles (2,875.04 km) from Miami Lakes, Florida to the Canada–United States border at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. In the U.S. state of Kentucky, I-75 runs through the eastern half of the state, from the Tennessee state line near the city of Williamsburg to the Ohio state line near Covington. The Interstate serves the state's second-most populous city, Lexington. Outside of it, the route is mostly rural or suburban in nature, mainly providing access to other cities via state and U.S. Highways. The major landscapes traversed by I-75 include the rolling hills and mountains of the Cumberland Plateau, the flat Bluegrass region, the urban core of Lexington, and the highly urbanized suburbs of Northern Kentucky; it also very briefly crosses through the Eastern Kentucky Coalfield at its southernmost stretch and passes near the Daniel Boone National Forest in London.
The floral clock in Frankfort, Kentucky, is a landmark located behind the Kentucky State Capitol. Dedicated in May 1961 by Governor Bert T. Combs, the clock was constructed as a joint project between the state government and the Garden Club of Kentucky.
Janet Lynn Stumbo is a former associate justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, the second woman to ever serve on the court. From 1993 to 2004, she was an associate justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court, becoming the first woman elected to that court.
John Stanley Palmore Jr. was an American judge who served as Justice of the Kentucky Court of Appeals from 1959 until it became the Supreme Court of Kentucky in 1975, and on the latter court until his retirement, in 1982. He served as chief justice in 1966, in 1973, and from 1977 to 1982.
Sara Walter Combs is a judge of the Kentucky Court of Appeals, representing the 7th Appellate District. She was the first woman and the first judge from the 7th district to serve as chief judge of the Court of Appeals, holding that position from 2004 to 2010. She was also the first woman to sit on the Kentucky Supreme Court after being appointed by Governor Brereton Jones to fill a vacancy in 1993. She lost her bid for re-election later that year. She is the widow of former Kentucky Governor Bert T. Combs.
Kentucky was the greatest producer of hemp in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was the source of three fourths of U.S. hemp fiber. Production started to decline after World War I due to the rise of tobacco as the cash crop in Kentucky and the foreign competition of hemp fibers and finished products. In 1970, federal policies virtually banned the production of industrial hemp during the war on drugs saying all Cannabis sativa is a Schedule I controlled substance. Federal law under the Agricultural Act of 2014 allowed research back into hemp. Kentucky began production again with 33 acres in 2014. As of the 2016 harvest season, only two U.S. states other than Kentucky had over 100 acres (40 ha) in hemp production: Colorado and Tennessee. The first 500-acre commercial crop was planted in Harrison County in 2017, and research permits were issued for over 12,000 acres (4,900 ha) that year. The 2016 documentary Harvesting Liberty concerns the 21st century Kentucky hemp industry.
