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1. At Jamestown, the earliest colonists applied their old-world distilling know-how to produce bourbon, the first corn-based whiskey.
2. George Washington established one of the nation's largest distilling operations at his estate, Mount Vernon, making him a Founding Father of both the United States and bourbon whiskey.
3. Whiskey-swilling Scots-Irish immigrants perfected bourbon's recipe in the rugged oak forests of the Appalachian frontier.
4. Kentucky-born Abe Lincoln received a liquor license to sell bourbon in 1833 before turning his attention to politics.
5. During the Civil War, soldiers on both sides liberally imbibed bourbon before, during, and after battle.
6. In cowboy saloons and gambling halls of the late-nineteenth century, bourbon put the wild in Wild West.
7. Bourbon fueled the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, and Ernest Hemingway during the first half of the twentieth century.
8. In 1964, Congress passed a resolution declaring it to be a "distinctive product of the United States."
For more on bourbon whiskey, check out Dane Huckelbridge's Bourbon: A History of the American Spirit !
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