At 16, he faked his age to enlist in the United States army.

After being honorably discharged a year later,

he got hired by the railway as a laborer. However, he got fired for fighting with a coworker. In 1909, he
worked as a laborer with the Norfolk and Western Railway and met Josephine Kin of Jasper Alabama and
they married afterwards and had three children; Harland Jr., Margaret Sanders, and Mildred Sander.
While he worked as a fireman on the Illinois Central Railroad, he studied law at night through La Salle
Extension University--until he ruined his legal career and got fired by getting into another fight with a
colleague. Harland was forced to move back in with his mom and get a job selling life insurance and he
got fired for insubordination.

In 1920, he founded a ferry boat company, which operated on the Ohio River. The ferry was an instant
success. Around 1922 he took a job as a secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in Columbus, India. He
admitted that he was not very good at the job and resigned less than that year. Later, he tried cashing in
his ferry boat company shares for $22,000 ($324,000 today) to create a lamp manufacturing company
only to find out that another company already sold a better version of his lamp.

It wasn't until age 40 that he began selling chicken dishes, country hand, and steaks in a service station.
As he began to advertise his food, an argument with Matt Stewart, a local competitor resulted in a
deadly shootout and was convicted of murder, eliminating Sanders’ competitor. In 1939 he was
commissioned as a Kentucky Colonel by Kentucky governor Ruby Laffoon. His local popularity grew, four
years later, he bought a motel which burned to the ground along with his restaurant. Yet this determined
man rebuilt and ran a new motel with a 140-seat restaurant, until World War II forced him to close it
down.

Following the war, he tried to franchise his secret recipe. His recipe was rejected 1,009 times before
anyone accepted it. Sander's "secret recipe" was coined "Kentucky Fried Chicken", and quickly became a
hit. However, the booming restaurant was crippled when an interstate opened nearby so Sanders sold it
and pursued his dream of spreading KFC franchises & hiring KFC workers all across the country.

After years of failures and misfortunes, Sanders finally hit it big. KFC expanded internationally and he
sold the company for two million dollars ($15.3 million today). Even today, Sanders remains central in
KFC's branding and his face still appears in their logo. His goatee, white suit and western string tie
continue to symbolize delicious country fried chicken all over the world. At age 90, Sanders passed away
from pneumonia. At that time, there were around 6,000 KFC locations in 48 countries. By 2013, there
were an estimated 18,000 KFC locations in 118 countries.
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.[6] Sanders began to serve chicken dishes and other
meals such as country ham and steaks.[17] 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, over the repainting of a sign directing traffic to his station. Stewart
killed a Shell employee who was with Sanders and was convicted of murder, eliminating Sanders's
competition.[18] Sanders was commissioned as a Kentucky colonel in 1935 by Kentucky governor Ruby
Laffoon. His local popularity grew, and, in 1939, food critic Duncan Hines visited Sanders's restaurant and
included it in Adventures in Good Eating, his guide to restaurants throughout the US. The entry read:

Corbin, KY. Sanders Court and Café

41 — Jct. with 25, 25 E. ½ Mi. N. of Corbin. Open all year except Xmas.

A very good place to stop en route to Cumberland Falls and the Great Smokies. Continuous 24-hour
service. Sizzling steaks, fried chicken, country ham, hot biscuits. L. 50¢ to $1; D., 60¢ to $1

In July 1939, Sanders acquired a motel in Asheville, North Carolina.[19] His North Corbin restaurant and
motel was destroyed in a fire in November 1939, and Sanders had it rebuilt as a motel with a 140-seat
restaurant.[19] By July 1940, Sanders had finalized his "Secret Recipe" for frying chicken in a pressure
fryer that cooked the chicken faster than pan frying. As the United States entered World War II in
December 1941, gas was rationed, and as the tourism dried up, Sanders was forced to close his Asheville
motel. He went to work as a supervisor in Seattle until the latter part of 1942.[6] He later ran cafeterias
for the government at an ordnance works in Tennessee, followed by a job as assistant cafeteria manager
in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.[6]

He left his mistress, Claudia Ledington-Price, as manager of the North Corbin restaurant and motel.[6] In
1942, he sold the Asheville business.[6] In 1947, he and Josephine divorced and Sanders married Claudia
in 1949, as he had long desired.[20] Sanders was "re-commissioned" as a Kentucky colonel in 1950 by his
friend, Governor Lawrence Wetherby.[21]
In 1952, Sanders franchised his secret recipe "Kentucky Fried Chicken" for the first time, to Pete Harman
of South Salt Lake, Utah, the operator of one of that city's largest restaurants.[22] In the first year of
selling the product, restaurant sales more than tripled, with 75% of the increase coming from sales of
fried chicken.[23] For Harman, the addition of fried chicken was a way of differentiating his restaurant
from competitors; in Utah, a product hailing from Kentucky was unique and evoked imagery of Southern
hospitality.[24] Don Anderson, a sign painter hired by Harman, coined the name Kentucky Fried Chicken.
[24] After Harman's success, several other restaurant owners franchised the concept and paid Sanders
$0.04 per chicken.[4]

Sanders believed that his North Corbin restaurant would remain successful indefinitely, but at age 65
sold it after the new Interstate 75 reduced customer traffic.[25][26][4] Left only with his savings and
$105 a month from Social Security,[4] Sanders decided to begin to franchise his chicken concept in
earnest, and traveled the US looking for suitable restaurants. After closing the North Corbin site, Sanders
and Claudia opened a new restaurant and company headquarters in Shelbyville in 1959.[27] Often
sleeping in the back of his car, Sanders visited restaurants, offered to cook his chicken, and if workers
liked it negotiated franchise rights.[4]

Although such visits required much time, eventually potential franchisees began visiting Sanders instead.
He ran the company while Claudia mixed and shipped the spices to restaurants.[4] The franchise
approach became highly successful; KFC was one of the first fast food chains to expand internationally,
opening outlets in Canada and later in the UK, Mexico and Jamaica by the mid-1960s. Sanders obtained a
patent protecting his method of pressure frying chicken in 1962,[28] and trademarked the phrase "It's
Finger Lickin' Good" in 1963.

The company's rapid expansion to more than 600 locations became overwhelming for the aging Sanders.
In 1964, then 73 years old, he sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation for $2 million ($16.2 million
today) to a partnership of Kentucky businessmen headed by John Y. Brown, Jr., a 29-year-old lawyer and
future governor of Kentucky, and Jack C. Massey, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Sanders became
a salaried brand ambassador. The initial deal did not include the Canadian operations, which Sanders
retained, or the franchising rights in the UK, Florida, Utah, and Montana, which Sanders had already sold
to others.[29]

In 1965, Sanders moved to Mississauga, Ontario to oversee his Canadian franchises and continued to
collect franchise and appearance fees both in Canada and in the US. Sanders bought and lived in a
bungalow at 1337 Melton Drive in the Lakeview area of Mississauga from 1965 to 1980.[30] In
September 1970 he and his wife were baptized in the Jordan River.[31] He also befriended Billy Graham
and Jerry Falwell.[31]

Sanders remained the company's symbol after selling it, traveling 200,000 miles a year on the company's
behalf and filming many TV commercials and appearances. He retained much influence over executives
and franchisees, who respected his culinary expertise and feared what The New Yorker described as "the
force and variety of his swearing" when a restaurant or the company varied from what executives
described as "the Colonel's chicken". One change the company made was to the gravy, which Sanders
had bragged was so good that "it'll make you throw away the durn chicken and just eat the gravy" but
which the company simplified to reduce time and cost. As late as 1979 Sanders made surprise visits to
KFC restaurants, and if the food disappointed him, he denounced it to the franchisee as "God-damned
slop" or pushed it onto the floor.[4][32] In 1973, Sanders sued Heublein Inc.—the then parent company
of Kentucky Fried Chicken—over the alleged misuse of his image in promoting products he had not
helped develop. In 1975, Heublein Inc. unsuccessfully sued Sanders for libel after he publicly described
their gravy as being "sludge" with a "wall-paper taste".[5]

Sanders and his wife reopened their Shelbyville restaurant as "Claudia Sanders, The Colonel's Lady" and
served KFC-style chicken there as part of a full-service dinner menu, and talked about expanding the
restaurant into a chain.[33] He was sued by the company for it.[33][34] After reaching a settlement with
Heublein, he sold the Colonel's Lady restaurant, and it has continued to operate, currently as the Claudia
Sanders Dinner House.[33][34] It serves his "original recipe" fried chicken as part of its non-fast-food
dinner menu, and it is the only non-KFC restaurant that serves an authorized version of the fried chicken
recipe.[35][36]

Sanders remained critical of Kentucky Fried Chicken's food. In the late 1970s he told the Louisville
Courier-Journal:[37]

My God, that gravy is horrible. They buy tap water for 15 to 20 cents a