The First Saturday in May: Since 1946
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The night before the 1945 Kentucky Derby, the city of Louisville was packed with racing fans. They booked every hotel room in the city, where people were crowded in three or four to a room. They filled the parking lots with cars with out-of-state plates. The biggest club in town, Club Madrid, was sold out with a capacity crowd of more than 1,400 people to hear an orchestra flown in from the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. Restaurants around town ran out of food.