1. According to legends coffee was discovered by some goat herders in 9th century Ethiopia, after their discovered what effect the berries had on their flock after being eaten. Then some monk made the berries into a drink and thus a long history was born. Or it could just be another story. 2. Statistics say that every year we drink over 500 billion cups of coffee all around the world.
3. Among the most traded commodities in the world our beloved coffee is only surpased by oil. And no wonder, since so many really don't feel whole without at least a cup of coffee.
4. Over it's long history coffee was banned several times, and most often than not on religious reasons. The first time was in 1511, in Mecca, then in Italy in the 16th century, and a third time by Murad IVth, in 1623. It was then that the decree stated you could even be thrown into the sea for drinking coffee, so it became a rather dangerous passion. In 1746 it was banned once again in Sweden, and it was even illegal to have even one coffee cup. Even if you had simply forgotten about it in some dusty cupboard. And finally in 1777, when it was banned by Frederic the Great, leader of Prussia, for a rather funny reason: beer was better than coffee, so the black and delicious drink had to go. As it wouldn't make the people prefer it over beer.
5. Recent studies have proven that coffee is useful not just for waking us up or for it's taste. When you drink you coffee on a regular schedule you actually reduce the chance of Alzheimer, Parkinson, heart and liver disease, gout, diabetes.
6. There are two main types of coffee beans, mainly Arabica and Robusta. If the first is the ever so popular, making about two thirds of production, Robusta has more caffeine, about twice as much. And about 40 percent of coffee is produced in Brazil.
7. If you drink a cup of coffee the caffeine will enter your blood rather fast, in about 10 minutes. What's funny is that the mere smell of coffee has proven to be able to wake us up. At least most of us.
8. You will encounter coffee plantations in over 70 countries, and most of them are in Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Latin America.
9. There is a lot of talk not about the good that coffee does to us, but about the bad. When it comes to the lethal dosage of coffee you can relax: it takes over 100 cups over a 24 hours period to put us in mortal danger. And no matter how much you love it no one could drink as much coffee in a single day. Not even Balzac drank as much.
10. There are over 80 types of coffee plants, but only four are used today. And wild coffee plants are a rarity today. One single plant has about five kilos of berries, which amounts to about 800 grams of coffee.
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