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.

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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 biologically inaccurate."
WFPL’s Liz Schlemmer and Ashlie Stevens looked for an answer.

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 neighborhood. So we went looking for the answer.

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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.

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 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.

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, 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.