QUALITY OF LIFE:

• Louisville has been consistently ranked by Places Rated Almanac as one of the best places to live in the United States.
• Louisville has one of the nation's most extensive metropolitan park systems, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, the architect of New York's Central Park.
• Louisville is one of the few U.S. cities its size with professional opera, theater, orchestra and ballet. In 1996, Time Magazine theater critic Richard Corliss said Louisville's theater is so good that "From now on, maybe Broadway should be called "off-Louisville." (Time, April 6, 1996, Page 90)
• Louisville was named one of the "30 Great Cities to Start Out In" in a book by that name published in 1997. In 1994, The Wall Street Journal listed Louisville as one of the 10 best large cities in which to launch a career.

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EDUCATION:

• Louisville's public school system was the first ever to receive the Scholastic Community Award for Excellence in Education (1993).
• Louisville is home to the Gheens Professional Development Academy, a national model for teacher training.
• In a 1998 "report card on public education", Education Week magazine praised Louisville's public school system as a leader in student achievement and implementing school reforms.

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HEALTH CARE:

• Louisville is a major health care center. The health care industry employs more people in Louisville than any other private sector service industry -- a total of 44,800 jobs.
• Internationally recognized work is being done in Louisville-area hospitals in the fields of spinal disease, organ transplants, cancer research, microcirculatory research and hand surgery.
• When Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, severed the tip of a finger in a farm accident just outside Cincinnati, he was flown to Louisville's Kleinert Kutz and Associates Hand Care Center to have it reattached.
• Louisville's Jewish Hospital is the nation's 8th largest heart hospital and 26th largest organ transplant facility.
• Kosair Children's Hospital was named one of America's 10 best children's hospitals by Child magazine in 1993 and was the second hospital in the U.S. to perform infant heart transplants.
• The Jefferson County Health Department is the nation's oldest county health department.

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AUTOMOTIVE:

• The largest automotive plant in North America isn't in Detroit... it isn't Japanese owned... and it doesn't even make cars. It's Ford Kentucky Truck Plant, which produces commercial versions of the F-Series pick-up truck. The facility measures nearly 4.7 million square feet -- more than 107 acres - under roof. The plant underwent a $650 million expansion in 1992, and another $500 million expansion began in early 1998.
• Ford's other local facility, the Louisville Assembly Plant, has the fastest line speed of any automotive plant in the world.
• Four of the ten best selling vehicles in the U.S. are manufactured in or near Louisville: the number one selling truck (and overall best selling vehicle), the Ford F-series pick-up; the number one selling automobile, the Toyota Camry; the number one sports utility vehicle, the Ford Explorer; and the number one selling small pick-up, the Ford Ranger.

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UPS:

• In 1982, UPS opened its air cargo hub in Louisville. The company started out with 7 places and 250 employees and boldly predicted it would grow to 1,500 employees. Today UPS employs more than 15,000 workers in Louisville and is the largest private employer in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.
• United Parcel Service, the world's largest common carrier, operates its international air-freight hub out of Louisville. Every day UPS places fly out of Louisville International Airport for destinations in 180 countries.
• Louisville International Airport is the 5th busiest air-cargo terminal in the U.S. and 8th busiest in the world.
• UPS also has its international customer service center in Louisville. It employs about 220 people, many of them multi-lingual, to respond to questions or requests about international shipping -- everything from export paperwork requirements to customs clearance procedures.
• Rolls Royce, the legendary British car manufacturer, warehouses all of its parts for the North American market in Louisville. When a Beverly Hills tycoon loses the hood ornament off his quarter-million dollar Silver Ghost, he is not about to wait two weeks for a replacement to come over from London on the QE II. He expects a new one the next day, and he gets it. Via UPS. From Louisville, Kentucky.

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LOUISVILLE IS:

• Home of the world's largest restaurant company, Tricon Global Restaurants, which operates the KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut restaurant chains.
• Home of the Kentucky Derby, "Run for the Roses", known as "the greatest two minutes in sports.
• Home of the first electric trolley
• Home of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat.
• Home of the oldest city supported college in the U.S., the University of Louisville.
• World's center for Braille printing.
• One of the top convention and trade show cities in the U.S., on a par with much larger cities, such as Dallas and Atlanta.

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KENTUCKY:

• Kentucky ranked seventh in the U.S. in new/expanded plastics facilities from 1990 to 1995, according to Site Selection Magazine.
• Eight of the world's 10 largest manufacturing companies have facilities in Kentucky (Source: Industry Week).
• Kentucky's business climate was ranked in the top 10 of all states in 1996 by Financial World magazine.

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FAMOUS LOUISVILLIANS:

Muhammad Ali, three time heavyweight boxing champion

Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken

Thomas A. Edison, inventor

Zachary Taylor, U.S. President

Louis Brandeis, first Jewish Supreme Court Justice

Pee Wee Reese, Hall of Fame baseball player

Paul Hornung, former professional football player

Diane Sawyer, ABC newscaster

Victor Mature, actor

Ned Beatty, actor

Tom Cruise, actor

Irene Dunne, actress

Lionel Hampton, jazz musician

Foster Brooks, comedian

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RELATED SITES:

www.louisville.com

Louisville/Jefferson County Visitors Bureau

Churchill Downs

Louisville, Kentucky Resources

Young Professionals Association of Louisville

Compare Louisville's low cost of living by calculating the comparable salary one would need to make in other cities: www2.homefair.com/calc/salcalc.html

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