In a fascinating twist, it was a famous and revered entertainer who is credited with inventing what we now know as the jello shot. Tom Lehrer was an influential singer-songwriter-satirist who became a smash in the 1960s with a number of best-selling albums. He retired from the music business decades ago and is 89 years old. In 2000 he explained it all to a San Francisco weekly newspaper, saying, “I was in the Army for two years (in the 1950s), and we were having a Christmas party on the naval base where I was working in Washington, D.C. The rules said no alcoholic beverages were allowed. And we wanted to have a little party, so this friend and I spent an evening experimenting with Jell-O. … And we finally decided that orange Jell-O and vodka was the best.”