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RIP Raquel Welch, The Hottest Girl Ever With a Laser Gun

After 25 years of tech journalism in print and web, it's time for a pivot

Jason Perlow

Feb 18, 2023 — 1 min read

This week, I was a bit taken by the passing of actress and sex symbol Raquel Welch, who died at 82. Her first film role was in the 1966 Sci-Fi classic Fantastic Voyage as Cora Peterson, a medical technician in a tight white SCUBA wetsuit (video) and crewmember of the miniaturized submarine Proteus on a race against time mission to the inside of a Soviet scientist’s injured brain. Albeit dated, it’s a great movie, and if you have HBO Max, I encourage you to watch it if you’ve never seen it.

Raquel Welch as Cora Peterson in *Fantastic Voyage* (1966)

In addition to being notable for giving young boys heart palpitations with her bombshell figure and coyish smile, she also wielded one of the first film examples of a realistic laser gun (the first was in 1964’s Goldfinger) as the technology had only been demonstrated in 1960, just six years earlier.

With her passing, I decided to make her a special cocktail, the “Fantastic Voyage”. Welch was born in Illinois in 1940 Jo Raquel Tejada, the daughter of a aeronautical engineer from Bolivia, so I felt it was appropriate to make this cocktail out of Singani, a white Muscat brandy of Bolivian origin similar to Peruvian/Chilean Pisco. If you can’t find a Singani, it’s ok to use Pisco (especially a Muscat one) for this.

FANTASTIC VOYAGE

2oz Singani 63 (for Raquel Welch, intoxicating and Bolivian)
2oz POM Wonderful pomegranate juice
2oz Cranberry Juice Cocktail
.5oz Lime Cordial

Shake with ice

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