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If you enjoy an occasional cocktail, you likely have heard, at some time or another, the origin stories for some of your favorite mixed drinks. But you might not know that for most of these drinks, someone else somewhere else is telling a different origin story. In fact, there is even dispute over the origin of the word cocktail.
During the civil war, the manufacture of powder and explosives was often handled by the most vulnerable, young women and children, whose labor was needed when so many men had been sent off to war. On March 13, 1863, the confederacy experienced a munitions disaster, in the confederate capitol of Richmond.
The appeal of one strange object, which achieved dizzying popularity in my lifetime, and today lives on mostly for nostalgia, is not so difficult to explain. All you need to do is turn one on and wait.
