Origin
Although many believe the inventor of the cocktail party was Alec Waugh of London, an article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press in May, 1917, credited its invention to a certain Mrs. Julius S. Walsh Jr. of St. Louis, Missouri.
Mrs. Walsh invited 50 guests to her house on a Sunday at high noon for a one-hour affair. "The party scored an instant hit," the newspaper declared and stated that, within weeks, cocktail parties had become "a St. Louis institution".
Alec Waugh noted that the first cocktail party in England was hosted in 1924 by war artist Christopher Nevinson.
Read more about this topic: Cocktail Party
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For, though the origin of most of our words is forgotten, each word was at first a stroke of genius, and obtained currency, because for the moment it symbolized the world to the first speaker and to the hearer. The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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The origin of all the family there.
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That now not all the houses left in town
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Of here and there a tent in grove and orchard.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)