So while the rest of the world uses the metric system, here in America, we use a system based on inches, feet, yards and miles.

Except on a particular stretch of Louisville highway. Lots of you asked us why. On this episode, WFPL's Ashlie Stevens finds out.

Curious Louisville wouldn't be possible without you! Click here to support the work we do:
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Which leads to our latest Curious Louisville question from Rachel Peterson: “Why does the U of L cardinal mascot have teeth?”

“Birds don’t have teeth,” Rachel said. “I get that it’s trying to look fierce, but it’s just biologically inaccurate."
WFPL’s Liz Schlemmer and Ashlie Stevens looked for an answer.

Nadeem wanted to know how this street came to be, in this neighborhood. So we went looking for the answer.

History is full of untold stories, and today on Curious Louisville, we're telling one. It's about two sisters who had a lasting impact on Louisville, and whose graves are here, even though they never lived in the city: Mary Elizabeth and Mary Gwendolyn Caldwell.

Listener Chuck Rogalinski wrote us: “Will you tell the story of the two sisters who weren’t born in Louisville, owned property in the city, married into European aristocracy and are buried in Cave Hill?”

In today's edition of Curious Louisville, we do just that.

"Every morning when I commute to work, no matter which way I go, I started to see more and more graffiti on the back of the signs," Joe Sullivan reported. "I saw it and I thought, I hope they take that down, because if they don't take it away, it's just going to embolden people to do more. And it seems to have."

Joe says he sees the artistic talent on display in some graffiti. But he also thinks it's distracting to drivers, and a bad look for the city. "It sort of gives the impression that we're not taking care of things."

So Joe asked Curious Louisville, who's cleaning that up? WFPL's Ryan Van Velzer took up the mantle. And the answer takes us on a commute of our own, through both sides of the art/vandalism debate.

There are Facebook groups dedicated solely to rating the different fish fries around town. And hundreds upon hundreds of people line up in our city's churches every Friday night to eat fried fish, hush puppies, and macaroni and cheese.

This made US curious: Why exactly are there so many Catholic fish fries in the city? And what (aside from the delicious food) makes them so popular? WFPL's Ashlie Stevens investigates, in this edition of Curious Louisville.

And Curious Louisville listener Evan Patrick wondered about how one neighborhood developed an identity of its own.

WFPL’s Ashlie Stevens looked into the answer.

He returned to Louisville with a gold medal, which he wore around his neck for days afterwards; some biographers say he even slept with it around his neck.

But then, the medal disappeared, and its fate has long been the topic of sports media speculation (despite the fact that he received a replacement medal in 1996).

One prevailing theory is that Ali had been turned away from a restaurant because he was black, so he tossed his medal off the Second Street Bridge into the Ohio River. But in interviews, Ali never gave a definitive answer regarding the medal’s location.

An Ali fan named Ray Watkins asked Curious Louisville to help him find out, once and for all. WFPL's Kyeland Jackson took on the challenge.

You can ask your own Curious Louisville question at curiouslouisville.org.

In fact, it’s been on Curious Louisville listener Mark Friedland’s mind: Whatever happened to the Falls Fountain?

In this edition of Curious Louisville, we find out the answer.

We've heard it compared to a school bus, a canary, and butter. Curious Louisville listener Allan Steinberg wanted to know how the color was chosen. (Allan's not a fan: "I was hoping it was only the primer!")

WFPL's Amina Elahi went to Rebecca Metheny, the director of the Louisville Downtown Partnership. They're responsible for the paint job, and they also oversaw the KFC Yum Center design and construction--and it turns out, the two are related.

Great questions make great stories, and Curious Louisville wants yours! Send us your question at CuriousLouisville.org. You and your curiosity might be featured in a future story.

This ring intrigued Curious Louisville listener Jim Turner, and he asked about it.

“I heard [the circle] was a wading pool administered by the Louisville Water Company in the late 1800's. Is that true?” he wrote.

Turner grew up in Louisville, not far from the stone circle. He remembers riding his bike from Field Elementary to the waterworks on Zorn Avenue.

“The waterworks was my playground because I grew up very close to it. I rode along and through the waterworks property going places I probably shouldn't sometimes. But when you're a kid, an indestructible kid, adventurous, that's what you do.”

So when one day Turner saw an old picture, taken from the distance that appeared to show a body of water — he thought maybe a pool — at the site of the stone circle, it made him curious.

Turns out, this stone ring in that's now in a fairly inauspicious place — the Champions Park dog run — was actually part of a lofty nineteenth century vision of a genteel Louisville lifestyle, made possible by pumped household water:

“The grounds will furnish our citizens with a delightful place of public resort where the man of business can find recreation from toil and oblivion of care, women and children obtain unrestricted exercise and amusement in the open air and the infirm consult heaven’s pure atmosphere and the genial sunlight as their medical advisors.”

That’s from around 1860, when the Louisville Water Company began pumping water. And it’s a description of the park around the stone circle. Louisville Water spokeswoman Kelley Dearing Smith said she believes it was written by Charles Hermony, the company’s chief engineer and superintendent.

In 1860, the water company’s major infrastructure was all located near the intersection of Zorn Avenue and River Road. There was the water tower and pump station; those are still standing. There was the city’s original reservoir, which was on a bluff where the Veterans’ Hospital is located today. And across the street, at the current site of the Champions Park dog run, was Water Works Park.

A central attraction of the park was this fountain. And in 1860, it was an engineering marvel.

“So what they did is, they took the pressure that was coming off of the water in the reservoir — because it's on a bluff right behind us,” Dearing Smith said. “And that pressure helped the water to shoot up into the air from the fountain.”

Unfortunately, Hermony’s vision was never really fully realized. Dearing Smith said the park was damaged shortly after it was built, by soldiers walking through on their way to fight in the Civil War. There were also possibly some other problems with upkeep, and with the park not being the attraction it was expected to be. By 1879, Louisville Water had built its current Crescent Hill reservoir, and the original reservoir wasn’t needed.

That stone circle is what’s still visible of the fountain. If you go into the dog park today, it’s hard to miss: it’s the site where all the little plastic wading pools are gathered, to help small dogs cool off in the summer.

And Jim Turner wasn’t the only person to wonder about it. We’ve gotten a few questions at Curious Louisville, and Dearing Smith has fielded some at Louisville Water, too. Sometime this spring, Louisville Water and Metro Parks plan to put a sign at the site, so everyone who comes to the Champions Park dog run will know the history of Water Works Park.

Have a question of your own? Ask it at CuriousLouisville.org.

You can drive to the base of the island, but you’ll be met with an array of “no trespassing” signs and wire gates.

And Curious Louisville listener Ruby Fields wanted to know what was behind them.

It’s small -- barely noticeable -- but a lot of people have questions about it. Including our latest Curious Louisville listener.

WFPL’s Ashlie Stevens has more.

In this installment of Curious Louisville, WFPL’s Energy & Environment Reporter Ryan Van Velzer visits the largest recycling center in Louisville to answer one of our most commonly asked questions.

But what actually causes them to malfunction?

That's what a Curious Louisville listener wanted know; As WFPL's Amina Elahi found out
the culprit is often power, or -- more accurately -- the lack of it. Here's more:

All three, along with about 100,000 other people, have been given the title “Kentucky Colonel.”

But how does one gain the honor? That was listener Patrick Grantz’s question for Curious Louisville -- and our resident Kentucky Colonel, broadcast managing editor Rick Howlett, has the answer:

He’s an artist whose music, as NPR’s Stephen Thompson once said, “evokes the old-timey spirit of a thousand crackling 78 RPM records.”

LaFarge is based in St. Louis, but lived in Louisville for a time, which is what inspired his 2015 song “Home Away From Home” -- and our latest Curious Louisville question from listener Troy Richardson.

WFPL’s Ashlie Stevens has more:

Here's our hour-long news special, hosted by Kentucky Public Radio’s Ryland Barton and WFPL education reporter Roxanne Scott.

"With JCTA and JCPS set to renegotiate a new contract for teachers this summer, what happens if the state takes over and the contract has not yet been negotiated?"

WFPL's Laura Ellis and Roxanne Scott have the answers... lots of them.

Shawn Carroll and Karen Rippy wanted to know if there had been other state-takeovers in Kentucky. And if so, how were they working out?

Ashlie Stevens talked to Kentucky Public Radio's Ryland Barton for the answer.

But this caused Rob Harris from Louisville to wonder: "What happens to race horses once they retire, winners or not?"

WFPL’s Ashlie Stevens went to a farm that specifically houses older thoroughbreds to find out the answer:

"So my best friend, her name is Hayley Amoss, and her dad is a trainer, Tom Amoss," Elizabeth said. "And he claimed a horse that’s actually running in the Oaks. Her name is Chocolate Martini and they only paid 25,000 for her. So that kind of sparked my curiosity about if there’d ever been a claimer in the Derby."

Elizabeth asked Curious Louisville whether any claimed horses had run in the Derby, and what's the least expensive horse that has run. WFPL's Laura Ellis looked for an answer.

As part of our Curious Derby series, WFPL health reporter Lisa Gillespie looked into how jockeys stay in shape for races, and how they heal after injuries.

In television coverage from the race, cameras zoomed in on veterinarian Dr. Larry Bramlage.

“They immediately euthanized her because there was no possible way to save her," Bramlage said after the race.

“But I’ll tell you,” said Blowen, “Nobody loved Eight Belles more than her trainer, Larry Jones. I was on the backside of Churchill Downs every morning that week, and he had that horse out grazing every day. He adored her, and no one was more broken up about what happened to Eight Belles.”

And Blowen himself loves horses, especially racehorses.

Old Friends is an expansive farm outside Georgetown — the kind with wide pastures and volunteers who hand-feed carrots to retired racehorses. Every morning Blowen visits 1997 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Silver Charm, yelling across the field, “Who’s the greatest horse in the world?”

He acknowledges that the entire industry hasn’t always taken all the precautions it could have to keep the horses safe — though things are getting better.

Two of our listeners, Mike Tarsa and Addison Cramer, wanted to know how often horses are injured or killed during thoroughbred races. And what’s being done to prevent it?

They asked Curious Louisville. So we called in our data reporter, Alexandra Kanik, to see if she could track down some numbers.

Tyler Franklin wanted to know, what's up with men's Derby fashion? How did it evolve? WFPL's Ryan Van Velzer needed the answer too -- he's going to his first Derby this year and had NO idea what to wear.

Tyler and Ryan teamed up for this Derby edition of Curious Louisville.

Whenever they do, Benz notices how packed the tarmac at Louisville International Airport becomes, which led him to wonder how many planes fly into the city over the course of Derby weekend.

As part of Curious Derby -- a special series by the producers of Curious Louisville -- WFPL reporter Kyeland Jackson set out to find the answer:

Ashlie Stevens

Pan.

Eventually, she got a different job, and when she visited the Belvedere again years later, Pan was gone. So she asked Curious Louisville: What happened to it?

When I first saw this question, I thought it would be a relatively easy one to answer. A quick Google search revealed the Belvedere Pan statue, as seen in the photo above, had been created by Charlotte Price (and cast by Louisville’s Barney Bright).

LVA/Submitted

Charlotte Price and Louisville sculptor Ed Hamilton.

I pulled out the city’s directory of public art, scanned for “Pan” and “Price” — and that’s when the story became more complicated.

Check it out in the player above. You can also download this story, and subscribe to Curious Louisville wherever you get your podcasts.

Something missing from the landscaping in your neighborhood? Or is there something else you’ve always wondered about Louisville? Type it into the form below and you might be featured in a future edition of Curious Louisville, where you ask the questions and we help you find the answers.

This Curious Louisville question actually has a variety of answers — ranging from the zoo’s educational programs to a baby pool on the rooftop of a Bellarmine University science building.

Dr. Zoli Gymesi is the senior staff veterinarian at the Louisville Zoo.

“Let me start by saying that any time we lose a zoo animal, it’s a sad day,” Gymesi said. “But with any loss, we try to maximize what we can learn from their death.”

He said that the zoo has a strict set of procedures after an animal dies.

“We have a dedicated necropsy room, and in the necropsy room is where we would do post-mortem evaluations,” Gymesi said. “That’s gross dissection of the animal after it has passed, you usually get a good feel there, and then you harvest tissues that gets sent off to a veterinary pathologist for microscopic evaluation.”

At that point, there is a full pathologic evaluation of the animal — cause of death, what kind of issues it had, and what zoo staff can learn from the death.

“Hides and bones, sometimes we will save some of those remains to use in our educational programs,” Gymesi said. “After that, whatever remains of the animals will be cremated. In some cases where cremation is not practical, like with real megavertabrates — big animals — they might get buried on zoo grounds.”

Gymesi said the animal graves don’t have markers because it’s more about the staff members who had worked with the animals being able to pay their final respects or visit if they choose.

Creative Commons

Louisville Zoo entrance.

But sometimes the remains don’t stay on zoo grounds.

Gymesi said the zoo has working relationships with a number of researchers, universities and labs across the country; one example is Dr. David Porta at Bellarmine University.

“Dr Porta studies fracture biomechanics and bones,” Gymesi said. “Sometimes we will save limbs from animals that have passed and he will use that in his study.”

And this relationship is the basis for one of the biggest (or, ahem, tallest) campus legends to come from Bellarmine University: that a giraffe carcass somehow ended up stored on the rooftop of Pasteur Hall. By way of disclosure, I attended Bellarmine, which is where I first heard this story.

“At some point in the end of March 2004, a very large male giraffe passed away,” Porta said. “Keep in mind, this giraffe was in its 20s, which is very old. Out in the wild, a giraffe is going to slow down and some lion is going to take it out of circulation. In a zoo setting, these animals can survive much, much longer.”

And this means, Porta explained, they start to see the problems of old age.

“Such as hip issues,” Porta said. “When it finally passes away, I’m sure a lot of people were doing research on the animal. At some point they contacted me, and said if you’d like to get some of the bones for study … so we were very excited to do that.”

He continued: “And while there, they asked if I would like to take the pelvis. They were curious about the hip problems with this giraffe, so they were very kind and asked if I would like to help them look at the hips.”

Porta left the zoo that day with several giraffe limbs and a pelvis, which has a diameter of about three feet and weighs 100 pounds.

But there was a problem.

“This still had the skin on and the muscle tissue, so I had to ‘deflesh them’ is the term we use, to get at the bones so we could see what happened with the hips,” Porta said.

And he needed a way to do this that would be quick and relatively mess-free on campus.

“I bought a small wading pool and I had that placed on the roof of our science building,” said Porta. “We’ve got some really great physical plant folks here at Bellarmine that are really game for anything. Most of those guys know me, so when I approach them, they know it’s going to be something weird. Then we used one of the cranes to lift the pelvis up onto the roof and set it in that pool.”

Courtesy Bellarmine University

Pasteur Hall at Bellarmine University

With the help of the late spring sun and some flies, the ‘defleshing’ process was off to a good start, but then Dr. Porta got a call.

“Well, while the giraffe was decomposing, this got to be May and I had taken a little time off, I’d left town, and I got a call from our secretary and she said. ‘There’s a problem in the science building, there are flies coming in through the vents,” Porta said.

Evidently, Porta said, there was a stack vent on the roof that wasn’t fully sealed. Flies swarmed a summer class. A call was made to the university president’s office. The vent was capped and a few years later, the school got a new science building.

The story has grown in the 13 years that have passed; when I was a student, I heard a variation that there were multiple giraffes in several baby pools. A version that’s a little closer to the truth is told on campus tours and the story will be documented in an upcoming book of university history.

But as outlandish as the giraffe story is, Porta said he learned something very emotionally important from it when he took the bones back to the zoo after examining them.

“I have to tell you, the zoo has some amazing people over there,” Porta said. “They are really caring people, they work very hard. They develop relationships with these animals, and that was something I wasn’t aware of since I work mainly in a human arena.”

He continued: “When I took these bones back over to show what had happened in the hips, there was probably a dozen people there — zookeepers and various staff and I mean, they were silent when I walked in with these bones. To them, they were learning what happened to their friend.”

You can download this story, and be sure to subscribe to Curious Louisville wherever you get your podcasts.

Submit your own question at curiouslouisville.org.

“Why is Louisville located at this particular point on the Ohio River instead of somewhere else?”

Submitted

Curious question asker Ben Taylor.

The answer lies mostly in the river — and the Falls of the Ohio.

At the Portland Museum just west of downtown Louisville, Teresa Lee took me on a topographical tour of the Falls of the Ohio, past and present.

Lee is the museum’s education and visitor services coordinator.

For early navigators, the prehistoric rock ledge formations and rapids that once interrupted the flow of much of the Ohio River near Portland were an impediment. But they were integral to the development of Louisville.

Lee said prior to construction and expansion of the Portland Canal in the 1800s and — much later — the McAlpine Locks and Dam, navigating the falls was dangerous work for pilots of Ohio River vessels.

“You had to make a decision. There were times of year you had to stop and get out of the river and walk around,” she said. “So you’ve got Louisville on one end of the falls and Portland on the lower end.”

And becoming a stopping point for travelers was a recipe for growth. Over half a century, Louisville expanded from a modest settlement established by George Rogers Clark in the late 1700s into a full-fledged commercial center.

“John James Audubon, in the 1840s, he called it an overgrown city, so even by 1840 people were complaining about urban sprawl and things like that,” Lee said.

Louisville became a bustling place for shipping, manufacturing and other business, including — infamously — the slave trade.

And Lee said the site that would become Louisville appeared destined to be a significant location. The falls was already a strategic point long before European settlers got here, part of a vast Native American trading network.

“No matter what time period you’re looking at, whoever controls the falls controls the flow of resources through this area,” said Lee. “Kentucky in general is geographically this transition zone between north and south and east and west.”

That centrality was also key to Louisville’s development.

The Ohio River has been altered over generations to accommodate commerce and safety, and remains part of the city’s lifeblood.

“We’ve modified the river considerably,” said Lee. “It’s on average about five to seven feet wider and deeper than it used to be through damming upstream and dredging and things like that.”

The Falls of the Ohio has been tamed, and today, boats and barges routinely pass through the locks.

People can still explore what remains of the Falls of the Ohio. A conservation area, fossil beds and an interpretive center are on the banks of the river at Clarksville, Indiana.

You can download this story, and be sure to subscribe to Curious Louisville wherever you get your podcasts.

Submit your own question at curiouslouisville.org.

We found out this distinct name is actually found on streets and buildings in both Louisville and Southern Indiana — Jeffersontown and Jeffersonville, specifically — and it turns out that the origin differs based on what side of the river you are on.

Jeffersonville Parks Department

The Nachand Field House in Jeffersonville, Indiana

Since this is a story about pronunciation, you’re going to want to listen to the whole story in the player above. You can also download this story, and be sure to subscribe to Curious Louisville wherever you get your podcasts.

Submit your own question at curiouslouisville.org.

That’s what Curious Louisville listener Katharine Crawford wanted to know.

Some sources have the tradition going back to the 1980s — originally a competition between two neighbors trying to outdo each other. But historian Joanne Weeter said Halloween on Hillcrest really started picking up steam in the 90s.

“1995 was the first year that Hillcrest was formally mentioned in the local paper that it was a Halloween thing,” Weeter said.

Word got out, and crowds started showing up throughout the month of October. These days, they number in the tens of thousands.

Up and down the street, stretching from Frankfort Avenue to Brownsboro Road, houses are decked out by proud homeowners who spend months preparing.

“It takes a commitment to pull off such a wonderful display that really borders on set design,” Weeter said. “These homeowners are putting in a lot of time and effort to put up such elaborate concoctions for Halloween.”

Who are these frightfully festive people?

We met Susan Longerbean on a stroll down Hillcrest the week before Halloween. Longerbean bought a house on the street to be close to her son’s school.

“And the tradition here is that the owners will leave the Halloween decorations behind,” she said.

So her family inherited Halloween decorations, including a pair of giant eyeballs, and several rows of sharp teeth. 

“I didn’t know what this house was,” Longerbean said. “And then a neighbor said, ‘oh, that’s the monster house!'”

She googled the words monster house, Hillcrest, Louisville, “and it popped up immediately!”

Emma Stevens

Susan Longerbean’s “monster house.”

She followed the design in the picture, and now Longerbean and her family fit right into their bloodcurdling block.

If you go to Hillcrest tonight to check out the devious decor and maybe score some candy, be prepared for a crowd; the neighborhood website says between 2,500 and 3,000 kids trick-or-treat there every year.

Once you wake up from your Kit-Kat coma, submit your own question at curiouslouisville.org. 

You can listen to this story in the player above, download it here, and subscribe to Curious Louisville wherever you get your podcasts.

It’s the high five.

From the documentary ‘Doctors of Dunk’

But while this gesture seems like it’s probably been around forever, its origin story may actually have local ties.

For WFPL’s Curious Louisville project, I looked into where the high-five came from, which led me from the basketball court to the baseball field — and behind an elaborate hoax.

Listen in the player above, download this story, or subscribe to Curious Louisville wherever you get your podcasts. And submit your own question at curiouslouisville.org.