Coffee, a powerful maker of history

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* Two of the world’s most powerful businesses, Lloyds of London and the New York Stock Exchange, started life as coffee houses.

* In the old days in Constantinople, the first coffeehouses were called qahveh khaneh (schools of wisdom) because they were the meeting places of men of arts and literature.

* The heavy tax on tea imposed in 1773 on the colonies that resulted in the “Boston Tea Party” resulted in America switching from mainly drinking tea to coffee. To drink coffee was an expression of freedom.

* Only pagans consumed this delightful beverage until Pope Clement VIII found it to his taste and lifted the ban that had long denied Christians the enjoyment of this pleasurable and stimulating beverage.

* The infamous French Revolution was born in French cafes. It happened in 1789 when the Parisians, spurred on by Camille Desmoulins’s verbal campaign, took to the streets and two days later the Bastille fell, marking the overthrow of the French government and changing France forever.

* In 1785, the coffee revolt broke out in Prussia because coffee consumption was restricted to the nobility, the clergy and high officials.

* In the 17th century, for unknown reasons, an English king forbade his subjects to congregate anywhere coffee was sold.

* One time in Germany, the government hired a special force known as Kaffee Schnufflers, to sniff out illicit coffee roasters and smugglers. It was an intense campaign brought about by King Frederick, who did not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers could be depended upon.

* Caffeine is on the International Olympic Committee list of prohibited substances. Athletes who test positive for more than 12 micrograms of caffeine per milliliter of urine may be banned from the Olympic Games. This level may be reached after drinking about five cups of coffee.

* Coffee was first known in Europe as Arabian Wine.

* The first European coffee was sold in pharmacies in 1615 as a medicinal remedy.

* Wild medical contraptions used to exist to administer a mixture of coffee and an assortment of heated butter, honey and oil to treat the sick.

* The word “coffee” was at one time a term for wine, but was later used to describe a black drink made from berries of the coffee tree. This black drink replaced wine in many religious ceremonies because it kept the Mohameddans awake and alert during their nightly prayers, so they honored it with the name they had originally given to wine.

* Coffee, if it were taxed like wine, would be more expensive than it.

* In December 2001, Brazil produced a scented postage stamp to promote its coffee — the smell was made to last for between three and five years.

– compiled from various sources