Happy 100th, Bloody Mary: Paris marks cocktail’s birthday

PARIS (AP) — Harry’s Bar in Paris is celebrating the 100th birthday of the Bloody Mary, the vodka-tomato juice cocktail believed to have been invented in the iconic bar in 1921. The centenary events this week (Dec. 12-18, 2021) come as a welcome respite from winter gloom and spreading worries about the omicron virus variant. The bar is carefully checking COVID health passes as visitors from Australia, Egypt and beyond gather at Harry’s, whose famed customers included Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. The great-grandson of the bar’s founder recounts the origins of the drink and legends over the origins of its name.