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Last time I guessed that the date of the first Gimlet was October 21, 1920. I guessed wrong, but close. Volume 1, Number 1 was dated October 28, 1920. That was the issue with the "HEY!!! YOU!!!!" article in it announcing the name Gimlet for the new newsletter.
But why the name Gimlet? The masthead of the early issues read, "The GIMLET – Bores Even Solid Ivory". We know from Webster’s dictionary that a gimlet is a "small boring tool with a handle at right angles to a shaft having at the other end a spiral, pointed cutting edge".
 But we also know that the editor of the Gimlet, and its predecessor the Spokesman, was Charles H. Mackintosh, a clever wit and punster, who called himself the "Damaging Editor". Surely he couldn’t have meant that his carefully crafted Rotary publication, the Gimlet, was boring. Or could he?
In the first issue of the Gimlet, James Kaye, Rotary’s 1920 District Governor for our district, wrote these congratulations for the new newsletter: "Greetings to the Gimlet! Coming from an outstanding club of the Fifteenth District, which helped make notable history in International Rotary, it can stand only for the highest ideals. May the Gimlet bore deep into the heart of Rotary."
No doubt Mackintosh’s Gimlet both bored and bored, as publications for a wide audience are wont to do at times. And that can be a good thing as Bertrand Russell observes: "Boredom is a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it." Mackintosh had no fear of it and launched the Gimlet with the gusto that continues today, as we "bore deep into the heart of Rotary". |
