1

2

Coffee’s Original Form

There isn’t a modern person in the world that doesn’t think of drinking coffee first, but its very first form was very different. The first African tribes to consume coffee did so in a chewable form.

How? By grinding the coffee beans together with animal fat, creating edible balls of coffee.

3

The Other Side of Decaf

Decaffeinated coffee has a very strange unintended side effect in its production.

The process of decaffeination obviously produces excess caffeine, but where does that caffeine go? To soda and pharmaceutical companies. Simply put, Coke has to get its caffeine from somewhere.

4

American Spending

On average, American women spend more on coffee every year than men do, with women spending an average of $2,327 per year and men spending $1,934 per year.

That level of consumption is impressive, but it’s nothing compared to…

5

Finland, Coffee Consumer Capital of the World

While there isn’t an average spending number to work with, there is an average statistic that puts Finland at the top of the worldwide coffee consumption leaderboard. The average Finn drinks roughly 4 cups of coffee every single day.

6

The Enemy of Sweden

As popular as coffee is in the modern world, it wasn’t always seen as a good thing. Multiple governments in the 18th century tried to outlaw coffee because they believed it stimulate “radical thinking” (in all fairness, we’ve all encountered at least one person hopped up on coffee saying insane shit, so this isn’t too crazy of a reason by 18th century standards).

Though Sweden hated it the most because in 1746 they outlawed coffee and any coffee-related gear. In other words, you’d be breaking the law if you even kept coffee cups around.

7

The Killer Dose

You definitely shouldn’t have too much coffee, but the amount required to actually put you down forever is pretty damn high.

It’s been determined that to kill a 150-pound person, they’d need to drink 70 cups of coffee consecutively.

8

A Brief History of Instant Coffee

Instant coffee is sometimes erroneously known as a fairly modern invention, but that’s not quite the case.

While the first mass-produced instant coffee to be patented was in the U.S. in 1910, the earliest form of instant coffee appeared in England 139 years earlier in 1771.

9

“Useless Corpses”

Speaking of England, it has its own odd little historical anecdote about coffee. In 1674, the Women’s Petition Against Coffee proposed a ban on drinking it unless you were over the age of 60. Their reasoning was that it was turning British men into “useless corpses.”

It’s not entirely clear exactly what they meant by that.

10

The Benefits of Cream

For those of you out there who put cream in your coffee, it has an unintended (potentially) positive side effect: It can keep your cup of coffee warmer 20% longer.

11

Brazil and the 1932 Olympic Games

The country of Brazil had plenty of athletes to send to Los Angeles for the 1932 Olympics, but it didn’t have the money to send them.

Brazil’s solution was extremely unconventional. They loaded the athletes onto a cargo ship full of coffee and sold it along the way to raise the money to get everyone to the games that year.

12

Coffee’s Other Favorite Customer

Humans seem to get the biggest boost from coffee, but another life form on Earth loves it as well:

Bees.

Bees are the primary way that coffee plants are pollinated, mostly because of the very sweet nectar produced by the flower of coffee plants. This nectar is also caffeinated, meaning bees get the same boost we do. In fact, it’s been shown that caffeine makes bees more efficient at gathering pollen.

13

Into the Void

Even astronauts insist on having coffee, despite some arguments about whether or not bringing stimulants into space is a good idea. Regardless, astronauts literally don’t drink coffee by the cup, they drink it by the bag. Simply put, it’s not easy to drink from a cup in a weightless environment.