This day was established by the United Nations General Assembly (UNESCO) to maintain awareness of the importance of freedom of the press and to remind governments of their duty to respect and uphold the right to freedom of expression. It also marks the anniversary of the Declaration of Windhoek, a statement of free-press principles put together by African newspaper journalists in 1991.
Today UNESCO will confer its Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize to an individual, organisation or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the defence and/or promotion of press freedom. The prize commemorates a brave Colombian journalist, Guillermo Cano Isaza, who was assassinated by drug barons outside his newspaper office in Bogotá, Colombia on 17th December 1986.
As fans of freedom of speech, we are marking the occasion with - what else? -- The Journalist. This old school take on the Martini made its print debut in Harry Craddock's Savoy Cocktail Book back in 1930 and is, we feel, long overdue both exposure and press freedom.
On this day in 1913, the Coronation Cinematograph and Variety Hall, in what was then known as Bombay, opened its doors to movie-goers, showing India's first ever feature-length film, Raja Harishchandra.
And its producer, "the father of Indian cinema", Dadasaheb Phalke, would probably not have imagined that today Mumbai would be home to the world's largest film industry - by ticket sales and number of films produced, at least. Let alone that Bollywood would produce its very own scandals, from sex tapes to brawls, on a scale to rival Hollywood.
We're toasting Bollywood with a glass of an East India cocktail.
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