Good morning, it’s Tuesday.
Back in my drinking days – going on more than a decade ago now – I had pretty basic tastes when it came to alcohol. The fanciest I ever got was maybe a Cosmopolitan, or a Muddled Old Fashioned, or maybe, if I was feeling particularly daring, a Sex on the Beach.
This was back before the rise of bespoke cocktails made with herbs and essences and syrups, which seem to everywhere right now – both in alcoholic and non-alcoholic versions. In truth, though, the cocktail has a long and storied history, dating back to the early 1800s.
First let us establish the definition of a cocktail.
Purists will tell you that it is an alcoholic mixed drink that typically includes a distilled spirit such as gin, vodka, rum, or whiskey and a mixer like fruit juice, sugar, water, bitters, or cream. These days, things have gotten a little looser. Pretty much any drink that includes at least two ingredients and is usually shaken and/or stirred (hello, James Bond) and served chilled will pass muster.
The truth is, though, that anything with just two ingredients – run and Coke, for example, or vodka and orange juice – is a mixed drink, while a cocktail is something fancier and more elaborate and creative concocted by someone who might call themselves a “mixologist.” In this way, all cocktails are mixed drinks, but not all mixed drinks are cocktails.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, a little history lesson.
The concept of mixing alcoholic beverages with something else, like spices or herbs, in an effort to enhance the flavor and/or extend the life of the base beverages dates back centuries. However, these concoctions were often viewed as medicinal and not consumed for general enjoyment.
During the Age of Exploration, sailors started mixing their spirits with water, sugar, and citrus juice (usually lime) to ward off scurvy, and colonists also were reported to enjoy a similar version of spirits, sweetener, spices, juices and water mixed together to form a sort of early punch. So-called “punch houses” were popular in Britain in the early 18th century – a precursor to cocktail culture.
It appears a version of the Old Fashioned – featuring spirits, sugar, water, and bitters, was one of the first known modern-day cocktail – described in 1806 as a “stimulating liquor” by The Balance, and Columbian Repository, newspaper published in Hudson, NY. The resulting concoction was colloquially known as a “bittered sling.”
A Connecticut bartended named Jerry “Professor” Thomas (AKA the father of modern mixology) is credited with spreading the cocktail gospel. He worked in bars across the U.S. and Europe and penned the handbook “The Bartender’s Guide: How to Mix Drinks,” which was the first comprehensive cocktail book published in America in 1862.
Cocktail culture was helped along considerably by the creation of the commercial ice exporting business, which enabled drinks to be served chilled – far more appealing than at room temperature.
Mocktails, (AKA “mock cocktails”), are having a moment right now due to the rise in the sober curious movement and growing recognition that alcohol is not, in fact, terribly good for you. But they too date back many years – originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as so-called “temperance drinks.”
These days, ready-to-drink canned cocktails – things like High Noon alcoholic seltzers, for example, as well as vodka-based iced tea and lemonade – are the fastest growing segment of the spirits industry, even as liquor sales in both the U.S. and the world has been steadily declining. Oddly, spending at bars is up, thanks in part to expanded food menus and non-alcoholic beverages options.
Today is National Cocktail Day. It won’t be warm enough to enjoy your beverage of choice out on the terrace, unless you bundle up well, it will still be a fairly nice day (comparatively speaking) is on tap, with sunny skies and high temperatures in the mid-40s. A few clouds might develop in the afternoon, but otherwise things will remain generally clear.
In the headlines…
LaGuardia Airport reopened yesterday afternoon, nearly 14 hours after a runway collision that killed two people, as investigators began examining how an arriving Air Canada jet collided with a Port Authority fire truck late Sunday night.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said officials would share limited information as the National Transportation Safety Board investigates the crash. He deferred questions about how many controllers were on duty Sunday to that agency.
Air traffic controllers at LaGuardia Airport may have been distracted at the time of a runway collision that killed two people last night, according to a recording of audio from the air traffic tower that has been reviewed by The New York Times.
The FAA is investigating whether a problem with a United Airlines flight distracted an air traffic controller in the LaGuardia Airport tower at a critical juncture, and whether it paved the way for a runway accident that killed two pilots.
The investigation into a deadly collision between an Air Canada jet and a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport was initially slowed by complications of the federal government shutdown, the chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board said.
One of the firefighters injured in the accident at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday, Officer Adrian Baez, was released late yesterday from the hospital, and another, Sgt. Michael Orsillo, remained hospitalized.
The crash at LaGuardia Airport occurred on the same date as what appears to have been the last accident with fatalities at the airport, when a USAir jetliner ran off the runway and into Flushing Bay as it attempted to take off in a snowstorm 34 years ago.
The U.S. Senate voted yesterday 54-45 to confirm Markwayne Mullin to lead the Department of Homeland Security as the shutdown of the sprawling agency dragged into its sixth week with no end in sight.
The Trump-aligned company tasked with creating the $220 million ad featuring Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem got a $60,000 signing bonus for making the commercial, during which time it spent $20,000 on horse rentals, lawmakers revealed.
President Trump invoked the name of Jesus Christ in a call for lawmakers to scrap their Easter break and stay in Washington, D.C. to try to pass his package of new voting restrictions.
Trump said that Republicans should stop negotiating with Democrats to end the partial government shutdown and instead focus on passing voting legislation, even as TSA agents work without paychecks and lines at some airports stretch for hours.
However, Senate Republicans said they believe that Trump is willing to accept a potential deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security following a White House meeting last night.
Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement were deployed at airports across the nation yesterday, but their exact purpose was unclear, and their presence did not ease the pain of many travelers.
Conservative Supreme Court justices questioned whether states should be allowed to count ballots that are mailed on time but arrive after Election Day.
Trump has long fixated on mail-in voting to bolster his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud. But he recently used the method in a Florida special election.
The Defense Department said that it was taking a new approach to limiting access to media organizations, after a federal judge ruled on Friday that major parts of its current policy were unconstitutional, in a case brought by The New York Times.
The Trump administration will pay the French energy giant TotalEnergies nearly $1 billion to abandon its plans to build wind farms off New York and North Carolina, the Interior Department said at an energy conference in Houston.
TotalEnergies has agreed to what’s essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina and New York, and will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead, the Department of Interior said.
A civil jury in California found that Bill Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted Donna Motsinger, a former waitress at a Sausalito restaurant, after escorting her to one of his comedy shows in 1972.
A wealthy Democrat running in a crowded primary in the lower Hudson Valley joked about child porn and having sex with a 17-year-old in a series of resurfaced social media posts — and even made a creepy sex-themed comment about his pets.
New York’s state budget is due April 1 but Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democrats who control the state Legislature remain divided on several issues as that deadline looms.
The state attorney general’s office has joined another lawsuit against the Trump administration, this one seeking to block new funding conditions imposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in various nutritional and agricultural programs.
Nearly a half-million New Yorkers are slated to get booted off of New York’s publicly funded Essential Plan health insurance program in July — and that’s the good news, according to Hochul’s office.
Hochul is working to drum up support for one of her top budget asks: reforming the state’s burdensome environmental review process that can impede housing and development.
Hochul this week downplayed the potential importance of a cap-and-trade-style pollution pricing program she once championed on a global stage.
Unions want state leaders to sweeten their retirement packages by “fixing” Tier Six, which was created in 2012. What would it cost, and what would it achieve?
Democratic state comptroller candidate Raj Goyle touts his tech background pitching himself as a data-savvy watchdog of public funds, but a pending lawsuit filed by his former business partner and longtime friend may impact perceptions of that experience.
New Yorkers applying for concealed carry permits will no longer be required to share their social media accounts with police, according to a settlement proposed in federal court last week.
RIP former Queens Assemblywoman Kathy Nolan.
GOP gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman dispatched his LG pick to an upstate gun rights club last week, then attacked Mayor Zohran Mamdani when asked about the club president’s social media posts calling him “vermin” and from the “Third World.”
Mamdani’s No. 1 Frenemy, New York Apartment Association CEO Kenny Burgos, is about to go head-to-head with the mayor’s rent freeze ideology at the annual Rent Guidelines Board meetings that kick off in March.
Mamdani’s preliminary proposal falls about $140 million short of his campaign promise to fund libraries, and the city’s top three library leaders say he is following the same pattern as past mayors in using their institutions are a budget bargaining chip.
For more than a hundred years, the city’s most isolated borough – Staten Island – has threatened to secede. After the election of Mamdani, some in the borough think it’s time.
A Brooklyn middle school used Mamdani’s wife’s artwork in a seventh-grade activist-themed lesson — at around the same time it had temporarily blocked a Holocaust survivor from speaking to students.
A veteran operative for former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has established a new political action committee to fight Mamdani and the DSA – an effort that could involve former city Comptroller Scott Stringer and aides to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
New York City must reduce school class sizes under a state mandate by the fall, but Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels acknowledged the massive challenge of that undertaking at a City Council hearing yesterday.
The Council formally moved to dismiss Council Member Vickie Paladino’s lawsuit against the body, saying her claims are “meritless”, but city lawyers conceded it may not actually have the legal standing to expel the Queens firebrand over her statements on X.
A Manhattan federal judge declined to release a City Council staffer detained by ICE as he awaits possible deportation.
New York University said classes continued as full-time faculty members affiliated with the Contract Faculty United-UAW went on strike, with substitute instructors or alternative plans in place for every section affected.
Starting Friday, concession stands on New York City’s iconic fleet of Staten Island Ferry ships will sell beer, hard seltzers and canned cocktails for the first time since 2019.
The number of tourists visiting New York City increased slightly last year, but fewer of those visitors came from other countries — part of a decline in international tourism seen across the United States since Trump returned to office.
Deadbeat drivers left nearly $350 million in tolls unpaid in 2025 — more than double the annual total from three years earlier, a new MTA analysis estimated.
A man died in custody Sunday while waiting to see a judge on a shoplifting charge, according to court records and the NYPD.
Judges in New Jersey yesterday appointed a new interim U.S. attorney, Robert Frazer, a career prosecutor who federal court veterans said could bring some stability to an office that has been in chaos for much of the past year.
A new wave of research, backed by a $1.3 million state study and high-tech modeling, is revealing more old growth in the Adirondack Park than previously thought.
For some Kingstonians, the eight-block area known as the Stockade District began to feel almost cursed. But in the wake of a long-delayed neighborhood facelift, many now seem excited about its future.
A deadly runway collision and subsequent closure at New York’s LaGuardia Airport had a minor impact at Albany International Airport, officials say.
City of Troy police have temporarily shut off the national search feature for Flock Safety cameras amid controversy over the company’s automated license plate readers.
The state’s highest court upheld a decision to cut 10 years off the sentence of a 26-year-old Troy man convicted in a fatal drive-by shooting.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
