24 October

On this day in 1945, as the world struggled to cope with the aftermath of World War II and the new world order that had emerged, the United Nations was established with the goal of preventing such a dreadful conflict from ever happening again. The world's largest international organization, 193 nations now belong to the United Nations.

United Nations Resolution 2782, passed in 1971, decrees that United Nations Day should be observed, and it recommends that today be a public holiday in United Nations member states. Few countries see fit to give us a holiday today, and sadly there are plenty of other UN Resolutions that governments and dictatorships choose to ignore.

However, to get into the spirit of today, we'll be indulging in an International Incident, a rich, creamy dessert-style cocktail.

Analogue TV ended

The 24th October 2012 marked the end of an era, the end of analogue TV in the UK. Over a century after the first proposals for an electric TV system, more than 80 years after the first British TV broadcasts, Britain's analogue TV signal was shut down.

With the demise of the old-school signal, with it went Ceefax, Teletext and other technologies long ago replaced by the interweb. This is, let's face it, unlikely to mean much to you, unless you still use a vintage telly - but the spectrum left clear by switching off all analogue signals became available for mobile technology, so hopefully improving phone services.

We are, personally, a little nostalgic for the days when TV was TV rather than something you streamed on-demand via a computer, mobile phone, or even a TV! So we are marking today with a BBC Cocktail.