In the 17th century, the first
coffee house opened in London known as "penny universities" because
a person could buy a cup of coffee for 1 cent and learn more at the coffee
house than in class! The London Stock Exchange grew from one of these coffee
houses.
In 1686 the first cafe serving
coffee is opened in Paris - Le Procope...it is still in business today!
In 1909 the first instant coffee
was produced.
When Admiral Josephus "Joe"
Daniels became Chief of Naval Operations, he outlawed alcohol on board ships.
He ordered coffee become the beverage of service on the ships, hence the term
"Cup of Joe."
Because sailors are generally
cold, they wanted their coffee hot. The term hot cup of joe was use, then
it was shorten to hot joe, then hojo.
Europe was cut off during war time and Napoleon's countrymen had to drink chicory instead of coffee. Chicory does not have caffeine - probably why he lost at Waterloo because his soldiers were not wide awake enough to win.
Coffee was once believed by
some Christians to be the devil's drink. When Pope Vincent III heard about
this he decided to taste it before banishing it...he enjoyed it so much he
baptised it, saying "Coffee is so delicious it would be a pity to let
the infidels have exclusive use of it."
In 1475 a Turkish law was enacted
that made it legal for a woman to divorce her husband if he failed to provide
her with her daily quota of coffee.
In 1732 Johann Sebastian Bach
composed his Kaffee-Kantate. Partly an ode to coffee and partly a stab at
the movement in Germany to prevent women from drinking coffee as it was thought
to make them sterile. "Ah! How sweet coffee taste! Lovelier than a thousand
kisses, sweeter far than muscatel wine! I must have my coffee."
Coffee was first known in Europe
as Arabian Wine.
Milk as an additive to coffee
became popular in the 1680's, when a French physician recommended that cafe
au lait be used for medicinal purposes.
In the year 1763, there were
over 200 coffee shops in Venice.
The heavy tea tax imposed on
the colonies in 1773, which caused the "Boston Tea Party," resulted
in America switching from tea to coffee. Drinking coffee was an expression
of freedom.
The founding fathers of the
U.S., during the revolution, formed their national strategies in coffeehouses.
In the year 1790, there were
two firsts in the United States; the first wholesale coffee roasting company,
and the first newspaper advertisement featuring coffee.
The prototype of the first espresso
machine was created in France in 1822.
12. By 1850, the manual coffee grinder found its way to most upper middle
class kitchens of the U.S.
The Civil War in the United
States elevated the popularity of coffee to new heights. Soldiers went to
war with coffee beans as a primary ration.
Italians do not drink espresso
during meals. It is considered to be a separate event and is given its own
time.
In Italy, espresso is considered
so essential to daily life that the price is regulated by the government.
In the ancient Arab world, coffee
became such a staple in family life that one of the causes allowed by law
for marital separation was a husband's refusal to produce coffee for his wife.
For reducing wrinkles and improving
their skin, the Japanese have been known to bathe in coffee grounds fermented
with pineapple pulp.
Coffee, as a world commodity,
is second only to oil.
Only about 20% of harvested
coffee beans are considered to be a premium bean of the highest quality.
The 2,000 Arabica coffee cherries
it takes to make a roasted pound of coffee are normally picked by hand as
they ripen. Since each cherry contains two beans, it takes about 4,000 Arabica
beans to make a pound of roasted coffee.
Coffee sacks are usually made
of hemp and weigh approximately 132 pounds when they are full of green coffee
beans. It takes over 600,000 beans to fill a coffee sack.
The Europeans first added chocolate
to their coffee in the 1600's.
In the year 1809, Meslitta Bentz
made a filter out of her son's notebook paper, thus inventing the world's
first drip coffee maker.
Coffee, along with beer and
peanut butter, is on the national list of the "ten most recognizable
odors."
In the 14th century, the Arabs
started to cultivate coffee plants. The first commercially grown and harvested
coffee originated in the Arabian Peninsula near the port of Mocha.
In 1670, Dorothy Jones of Boston
was granted a license to sell coffee, and so became the first American coffee
trader.
William Penn purchased a pound
of coffee in New York in 1683 for $4.68.
Adding sugar to coffee is believed
to have started in 1715, in the court of King Louis XIV, the French monarch.
The year was 1716 when Venetian
coffee shop merchants began distributing leaflets exalting their new product:
coffee. This may be the first example of advertising for coffee shops.
Scandinavia has the world's
highest per capita annual coffee consumption, 26.4 pounds. Italy has an annual
consumption per capita of only 10 pounds.
Brazil accounts for almost 1/3
of the world's coffee production, producing over 3-1/3 billion pounds of coffee
each year.
Coffee as a medicine reached
its highest and lowest point in the 1600's in England. Wild medical contraptions
to administer a mixture of coffee and an assortment of heated butter, honey,
and oil, became treatments for the sick. Soon tea replaced coffee as the national
beverage.
Regular coffee drinkers have
about one-third less asthma symptoms than those non-coffee drinkers. So says
a Harvard researcher who studied 20,000 people.
Source: The Coffee Experts
