When: June 10
National Iced Tea Day on June 10 honors the drink Americans reach for the moment temperatures rise — a cold-brewed, sweetened, or sparkling staple that's been in the national vocabulary since 1904.
Richard Blechynden was failing to sell hot tea at the 1904 World's Fair. He poured it over ice, gave it away, and accidentally created America's default summer drink.
Tea had been brewed and drunk hot for centuries before anyone thought to pour it over ice. The first published American recipe for iced tea appears in an 1876 cookbook by Marion Cabell Tyree — predating the famous World's Fair story by nearly 30 years — but it was Richard Blechynden who made it a national habit. At the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, Blechynden had been hired to promote Indian and Sri Lankan tea on a blistering summer day when nobody was stopping at his booth. He poured the hot tea over ice and started giving it away. Lines formed. Within a decade, iced tea was a fixture in American homes. Why did it take hold so completely in America and nowhere else? Ice. Mechanical ice production and refrigeration were advancing rapidly in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, making cold drinks practical at home for the first time. In Britain and Asia, where tea culture was deeper, the infrastructure for reliable cold drinks came later, and the hot tea habit was already...