KENTUCKY (1,859), an American State in the S. of the Ohio basin, with the Virginias on its E. and Tennessee on its S. border and the Mississippi River on the W.; is watered by the Licking and Kentucky Rivers that cross the State from the Cumberland Mountains in the SE. to the Ohio, and the Tennessee River traverses the western corner; the climate is mild and healthy; much of the soil is extremely fertile, giving hemp and the largest tobacco crops in the Union; there are dense forests of virgin ash, walnut, and oak over two-thirds of the State, and on its pasturage the finest stock and horses are bred; coal is found in both the E. and the W., and iron is plentiful; the chief industries are whisky distilling, iron smelting and working; admitted to the Union in 1792, Kentucky was a slave-holding State, but did not secede in the Civil War; the capital is Frankfort (8), the largest city Louisville (160); the State University is at Lexington (29).

KEPLER, JOHN, illustrious astronomer, born at Weil der Stadt, Wuertemberg, born in poverty; studied at Tuebingen chiefly mathematics and astronomy, became lecturer on these subjects at Graetz; joined Tycho Brahe at Prague as assistant, who obtained a pension of L18 for him from the Austrian government, which was never paid; removed to Lintz, where Sir Henry Wotton saw him living in a camera obscura tent doing ingenious things, photographing the heavens, “inventing toys, writing almanacs, and being ill off for cash ... an ingenious person, if there ever was one among Adam’s posterity ... busy discovering the system of the world—­grandest conquest ever made, or to be made,” adds Carlyle, “by the sons of Adam”; he was long occupied in studying the “’motions of the star’ Mars, with calculations repeated seventy times, and with the discovery of the planetary laws of the Universe”; these last are called from his discovery of them Kepler’s Laws; the first, that the planets move on elliptic orbits, the sun in one of the foci; the second, that, in describing its orbit, the radius vector of a planet traverses equal areas in equal times; and the third, that the square of the time of the revolution of a planet is proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the sun; poverty pursued Kepler all his days, and he died of fever at Ratisbon (1571-1630).

KEPLER’S LAWS.  See KEPLER, JOHN.

KEPPEL, AUGUSTUS, VISCOUNT, son of the Earl of Albemarle; entered the navy, and was in several engagements between 1757 and 1778; when encountering the French off Ushant he quarrelled with his second-in-command and let them escape; was court-martialled, but acquitted; he was afterwards First Lord of the Admiralty (1725-1786).

KER, DR. JOHN, minister and professor, was horn in Peeblesshire, brought up in Edinburgh; studied there and in Halle, was chosen to fill the chair of Practical Training in the U.P.  Theological College in 1876; published some “Sermons,” and “The Psalms in History and Biography” (1819-1886).