Curious Louisville

It sits alongside a brick building in Louisville’s NuLu neighborhood. It’s a metal box, about the size of a dresser, or maybe a deep freezer, but a little taller. And it makes a beeping sound. Sort of an alarm, but so quiet you can't hear it until you're close to the box. It's been described as "quietly having a meltdown." Local lore says it's been beeping this way for years, and no one knows why. On this episode, a curious communi...

At the corner of Brook and Oak Streets in Old Louisville sits a building that started out as the duPont Manual Training High School, back in 1892. When Dan Trabue moved to the neighborhood around 25 years ago, he noticed something curious near the building's roofline: six round medallions, each with a face staring out over the neighborhood. "I was curious who they were and I couldn't really see them that well," Dan says. "I asked a...

"Whose voice is that on the the walk sign at Douglass Loop and Bardstown Road? I go through that area quite a bit, and at some point I noticed that there was a voice, and that the voice didn't sound like they were from Louisville." That's what Dan Pike and many other people have been curious about over the years. So he sent his message to Curious Louisville, and LPM's Giselle Rhoden was up for the challenge. Have a burning ques...

For fourteen years, Robert Miles has seen cars in ditches, in neighbor’s yards and in his own fencing that borders the boundary of the horse farm his family owns. He lives off Todds Point Road in Shelby County. “It’s horrific, you’re taking your life in your hands every time you go through,” Miles said of a particular curve in the road. Todds Point is an idyllic rural road going through horse country. But it’s narrow, and doesn’t h...

The United States prides itself on a kind of rugged individualism. We like to think we do things our own way here.

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 her...

Woody Woodpecker. Donald Duck. Iago from “Aladdin." Louie, the U of L cardinal. All these birds have something in common: at various points in their histories, they have been depicted with a full toothy grin.

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 bi...

Nadeem Saddiqui and his family recently moved to Valley Station, in the southeastern part of Louisville. "It's stereotypically not the most multi-cultural area of Louisville," he said. So it surprised him to see a street named Omar Khayyam Blvd. "It was a medieval Persian poet," he said. "Growing up my parents had a lot of books of his poetry."

Nadeem wanted to know how this street came to be, in this ...

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Curious Louisville is all about you. You send us your questions, and we take you along with us on a search for the answer. It's people-powered. In fact, our whole organization here is people-powered -- it's because of your support that we can do the work we do. Join us with a pledge today, and we pledge in return to keep letting your curiosity be our guide! Click here to give. Thank you!

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History i...

Is it art? Is it crime? A little bit of both? Whatever it is, it's part of your morning commute.

"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 ...

Every year at the beginning of Lent, (the period in the Christian calendar between Ash Wednesday and Easter) WFPL publishes a guide to all the fish fries in Louisville. It's always one of our most popular stories of the year.

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...

In the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, a young Muhammad Ali -- then called Cassius Clay -- defeated three-time European boxing champion Zbigniew Pietrzykowski.

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 ...

If you're driving downtown near the river, you can't miss it: a brand new paint job in progress on the Clark Memorial Bridge.

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 Partner...

In a park off of River Road, nearly hidden by scrubby grass is a mystery: an about 50-foot wide stone circle marking long-ago infrastructure.

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...

Over the last couple years, WFPL's Curious Louisville has received nearly a dozen questions about Louisville recycling. People want to know what happens after it leaves the curb, where it all goes, and how a 2017 Chinese policy impacts recycling in Kentucky.

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 ...