21 October

National Mezcal Day

Mezcal Margarita

So we are drinking a...

Mezcal Margarita

Perhaps this page should read 'International Mezcal Day', as although this 'National Day' is an all American creation there are a great many of us around the world who feel mezcal deserves a day of its own. A day us devotees can show our appreciation for the artisanal Mexican producers that craft this delectable agave spirit and, well, to enjoy drinking mezcal.

With this is mind we sugest you mix up Mezcal Margarita while you peruse the rest of our 20 best Mezcal cocktails.

Apple Day

Launched in 1990, in the UK, Apple Day falls annually on 21st October and should not be confused with Äpplets Dag in Sweden which is in September. As well as a celebration of the fruit, Apple Day is intended to highlight the loss of traditional varieties of not just apples but also that diversity of landscape, ecology and culture that are all under threat.

Apple Day was created by the Dorset-based English charity Common Ground, itself founded in 1983 with the idea of promoting and protecting "local distinctiveness." Common Ground has used the apple as a symbol of the natural environment, cultural and genetic diversity the charity strives to protect. We're celebrating Apple Day and remembering yesterday's World Calvados Day with an Apple Cart.

It's also the day Nelson died

As Napoleon massed his forces on the French coast ready to invade Britain, the British fleet gathered just west of Spain's Cape Trafalgar, ready to take on the French and Spanish navies.

The battle took place on this day in 1805 and, thanks to Lord Nelson, victory went to the British. Sadly, though, Nelson gave his life during the battle, his spine shattered by a bullet. Legend has it that his body was brought home in rum, giving the spirit its nickname, Nelson's Blood, so the thoroughly rummy Nelson's Blood cocktail makes an eminently suitable memorial. In British pubs, a combination of equal parts port and brandy is sometimes also traditionally called a Nelson's Blood.

Today is not the rapture

Harold Camping, doyen of doomsday mongers, is one of few people to have predicted the End of the World no fewer than three times - and appears, in all honestly, to have believed it each time.

More predictably his own demise preceded that of the world and he died in December 2013, two years after he'd given up the predictions game for good. Already 90, he had spent much of the profits from his evangelical Family Radio station advertising the upcoming Rapture, when the righteous (AKA members of his church) would fly up to heaven, leaving everyone else to a welter of plagues and brimstone that would destroy the earth.

This is probably a good thing. Many of Camping's followers gave up homes and jobs in preparation for his first rapture, back in 1994, the second, in May 2011, and the third, rescheduled for this day in 2011. We are marking the end of the end of the world predictions (at least for the moment) with an appropriately named Judgement Day.

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