Friday night we were talking about our favorite cocktails and, when pressed on our like of dirty martinis, couldn’t explain what made them different from other martinis, nor what made other martinis different from dirty martinis. We suddenly realized that our alcohol history is sorely lacking, so went looking for a crash course guide to our favorite drinks’ beginning narratives.

Thankfully, the hard drinkers at mental_floss Blog anticipated this interest in cocktail historicism, and compiled a helpful listicle of popular cocktail invention myths. So pad out your bar-night trivia knowledge, won’t you, with these 11 Cocktails’ Origin Stories.

• 1. The Martini: Shrouded in disagreement, the king of cocktails may have come from a 19th century vermouth distillery in Italy, a cocktail bar in New York City in the early 20th century, or be an adapted version of an older cocktail, the Martinez.

• 2. The Manhattan: Formed in the glitzy political world of 1874 New York politics, this drink was named after the same-named club where a party was being held for newly-elected New York governor Samuel J. Tilden.

• 3. The Bellini: Borne of a collaboration between Venetian bartender Giuseppe Cipriani and Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini, whose pink-robed figure (above) evoked the mixologist’s fruitful concoction.

• 4. The Kir: Felix Kir, mayor of Dijon, spent his 23 years in public office pushing this drink on visiting dignitaries. With enough persistence, these guests developed a liking for the sweet drink and found it intimately bound to their visits with Mr. Kir, hence its name.
  

• 5. The Daiquiri: Against all the high-powered political origins of the above drinks, the daiquiri is distinctly working-class. American Jennings Cox invented the heady rum drink in 1905 with fellow miners in Cuba.

• 6. The Tom Collins: In 1874, a rumor spread through New York City’s bars that some “Mr. Tom Collins” had been speaking ill of the city and its inhabitants, sending groups of citizens into the streets in search of the mysterious slanderer. There was no person Tom Collins though, and whenever the heated mob asked a bartender his whereabouts, they were served this new drink.

• 7. The Cosmopolitan: This high-profile drink’s origins are hotly contested (New York, San Francisco, Minneapolis, South Beach and Provincetown, MA have all staked a claim to its birth), though it’s likely the simple addition of cranberry juice to a Kamikaze recipe was conceived in several places and by several people around the same time.

• 8. The Sazerac: New Orleans’s official cocktail dates back to the 1830s, when local pharmacist Antoine Peychaud (store pictured at right) invented the perfect remedy to heal all ills.
  

  Antonie Peychaud's pharmacy at 437 Royal Street (wallyg / Flickr)

• 9. The Negroni: An Americano boosted with some gin, this cocktail bares the name of Count Camillo Negroni, who invented it in 1919.

• 10. The Black Russian: Though its name refers to the drink’s vodka content, this is a decidedly international drink. It was first poured by Gustave Tops, bartender at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels for then U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg, socialite Perle Mesta.

• 11. The Long Island Iced Tea: The only interesting thing about this drink’s origins is the name of the bartender who invented it in 1976 at the Oak Beach Inn in Hampton Bays: Rosebud Butt.

(via COED Magazine)