The Colosseum

The great Flavian Amphitheater, or Colosseum, in Rome was erected by the emperors Vespasian and Titus in about AD 70-82 on the site of the Golden House of Nero.

It measured 513 by 620 feet. With seating width at only about 14 inches per person, the Colosseum had a maximum capacity of 50,000 people.

The Colosseum was built to celebrate the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem ten years earlier.

To celebrate its opening there are games lasting one hundred days. Most of the 10,000 men who took part were killed and 5,000 animals were massacred.

The Romans invented concrete and used it for many of their most famous buildings, including the Colosseum.

The Colosseum had a retractable cloth awning which weighed about 24 tons (21.8 tonnes) and was held up by a large network of ropes and 240 huge pillars. It covered 30% of the entire structure and provided shade for all of the spectators. It was operated by sailors of the Roman Navy known as "velarii".

A million animals and 500,000 people are estimated to have died in total in the Colosseum arena.

The name Colosseum was applied to this structure sometime around 1000AD. The stadium got its name not because of its massive size, but because its proximity to a colossal 'Statue of Liberty' sized bronze statue of the Emperor Nero.

The spelling was sometimes altered in Medieval Latin: coloseum and coliseum are attested from the 12th and 14th centuries respectively.

In the late 1990s, Heinz-Jürgen Beste of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome was studying the underground chambers of the Colosseum when he found patterns of holes, notches and grooves in the walls. By connecting the dots of the negative space, he discovered that a system of elevators had been used to transport wild animals and scenery to the main floor.

If the Colosseum was built today, it would cost around  39 million euros - the equivalent of almost 43 million dollars.

Source Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia © 1998 The Learning Company, Inc.

Colgate

An American, William Colgate (January 25, 1783 – March 25, 1857) started a candle, starch and soap making company on Dutch Street in New York City under the name of "William Colgate & Company" in 1806.

In 1820, Colgate started a starch factory across the Hudson in Jersey City, leading to a long involvement of the company in Jersey City.

Colgate introduced its first toothpaste, an aromatic toothpaste sold in jars in 1873.

Colgate became in 1896 the first company to manufacture toothpaste in a collapsible tube, similar to the tubes that had just been introduced for artist's oil colors. Colgate Ribbon Dental Cream was invented by dentist Washington Sheffield.

In 1928, Palmolive Peet merged with Colgate to form Colgate-Palmolive-Peet.

1915 magazine ad

Ajax cleanser was one of their first major brand names introduced in the early 1940s.

In 1953, the name was shortened to just Colgate-Palmolive.

Colgate bought a Chinese toothpaste brand called Darkie in 1985. The name was changed to Darlie but is still sold in China as Black Person Toothpaste.

Colgate in Argentinian Spanish translates directly to the imperative command of "hang yourself."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in the country town of Ottery St Mary, Devonshire, England on October 21, 1772. His father, the Reverend John Coleridge (1718–1781), was a well-respected vicar of the parish and headmaster of Henry VIII's Free Grammar School at Ottery.

During the end of the eighteenth century, Samuel Coleridge lived in a miserable, mice infested cottage at Nether Stowey, rented for £7 a year and described as " a miserable hovel" by Coleridge's wife, Sara. He wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner there between 1797-98.

The Nether Stowey locals suspected the Coleridges of being French spies because of their radical political and theological ideas.

Coleridge was a Unitarian, who had considered entering the Unitarian ministry and a pantheist. He had preached throughout the West Country and on one occasion after hearing Coleridge preach, the writer William Hazlett commented “Poetry and philosophy met together. Truth and genius had embraced…under the eyes of religion.”

Coleridge edited for a short time in 1796 a radical Christian journal, The Watchman, which ran for ten issues.

For twenty years Coleridge took half a gallon of laudanum a week for his rheumatism and toothache and he became totally addicted to it.

Coleridge had a bodily revulsion due to his drug addiction, which induced obsessive washing. He couldn't endure the least bit of dirt on his person.

In 1813 after a physical and spiritual crisis at the Greyhound Inn, Bath, Coleridge reached a turning point recommitting himself to the Christian faith , and openly confessing to his opium addiction.

Kublai Khan was written by Coleridge one night in 1797 after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China, Kublai Khan. Not feeling well, he took some opium  and fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence: "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto: and thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall."

Coleridge had an opium-influenced dream in which he composed from two to three hundred lines. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream until he was interrupted by "a person from Porlock".

20 years after Samuel Coleridge composed Kublai Khan after an opium influenced sleep, the poem was finally published on May 25, 1816.

Coleridge wrote about 750 poems in total including an elegy to his broken shaving pot.

Coleridge in 1795

A voracious reader, he said the three best-plotted works in literature were Oedipus Rex, Tom Jones and The Alchemist as all the loose ends were tied up at the end.

Coleridge had the habit of scribbling notes and comments in books as he read them. His collected scribbles ran to five volumes.

Among the many words that Coleridge coined were soulmate, bisexual, boastfulness, dream world, dynamic, factual, pessimism and psychosomatic.

The phrase "suspension of belief" was first used by Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria (1817).

Coleridge was out riding with a friend wearing his usual shabby clothes. Seeing some people approaching, Coleridge suggested he pass himself off as his friend's servant. "No" said the companion, "I am proud of you as a friend but would be ashamed of you as a servant."

In April 1816, Coleridge, with his addiction worsening, took residence in the Highgate homes, then just north of London, of an admirer Dr James Gillman, a young surgeon, first at South Grove and later at the nearby 3 The Grove.

Coleridge at age 42, portrait by Washington Allston

Coleridge grew plants on his windowsill at his The Grove, Highgate home, including the symbolic herb myrtle, emblem of lost love.

The model Kate Moss bought Coleridge's former The Grove Highgate home in 2011.

Coleridge died in Highgate, London on July 25, 1834 as a result of heart failure compounded by an unknown lung disorder, possibly linked to his use of opium.

Source Faber Book of Anecdotes 

Cold War

The phrase “cold war” to describe the tension between the Soviet Union and the West was popularized in 1947 by the American financier and presidential advisor Bernard Baruch. In a speech in south Carolina he said “Let us not be deceived-we are today in the midst of a cold war.”

It was Baruch's speechwriter Herbert Bayard Swope, who had been using the phrase privately since 1940, who suggested it to him.

During the Cold War, "Third World" was coined to define countries that were neither aligned with NATO (the "first world") or the Communist Bloc (the "second world"). Under the original definition, Sweden, Finland and Austria are "third world countries". The concept itself has become outdated as it no longer represents the current political or economic state of the world.

The CIA offered funding to artists Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and de Kooning so that their abstract work would show how free artists were in the United States compared to the rigid work of the Soviet Union.

In 1960, Canada bought thirty MIG-21 fighter jets from the Soviet Union, pushing Canadian-American relations to the breaking point. In protest three beavers were executed by pistol on the lawn outside the State Legislature in Frankfurt, Kentucky.

According to reports from multiple sources, including Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book The Final Days and Henry Kissinger's memoir White House Years, President Richard Nixon allegedly ordered a tactical nuclear strike against North Korea in April 1969 after a North Korean fighter jet shot down a US Navy EC-121 spy plane.

Nixon was reportedly enraged by the incident, and he ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to recommend targets for a nuclear strike. Kissinger, however, spoke to military commanders on the phone and persuaded them not to do anything until Nixon had sobered up the following morning. Kissinger later wrote that Nixon's order was "the most dangerous moment of the Cold War."

In 1969, at the height of the Cold War, the Apollo 11 crew carried commemorative medals to the moon to honor two Soviet cosmonauts who died as part of the USSR's human spaceflight program.

During a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida on March 8, 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an "evil empire".

The first of five summits between Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan commenced in Geneva on November 19, 1985. This historical gathering marked a significant turning point in the Cold War era, signaling a shift towards a more constructive dialogue between the two superpowers.

The Geneva Summit was a pivotal moment in thawing the icy relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. Despite their ideological differences, Gorbachev and Reagan demonstrated a willingness to engage in open and honest discussions about issues ranging from nuclear arms control to regional conflicts. Their personal rapport and shared commitment to peace laid the groundwork for future summits that would further contribute to the easing of tensions between the two nations.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan agreed to pause the Cold War in case of an alien invasion.

During a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on June 12, 1987, Ronald Reagan made a historic and iconic statement challenging  Mikhail Gorbachev to take down the Berlin Wall. Standing near the symbol of the Cold War division between East and West, Reagan passionately declared, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The speech was seen as a strong statement of support for German reunification and a call for greater freedom and democracy in the Eastern Bloc. Although the wall was not immediately dismantled, Reagan's words became synonymous with the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany.

Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts at reform and partnership with Ronald Reagan led to the end of the Cold War. On December 3, 1989 Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev announced the official end to the Cold War at a meeting in Malta.

The Soviet leader was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to lessen Cold War tensions and open up his nation.

Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan sign the INF Treaty at the White House, 1987

During the Cold War, the Americans considered airdropping enormous condoms labeled “Medium” on the Soviets.

In 1984 Ronald Reagan sent the Soviet Army on high alert after saying "We begin bombing in five minutes" while doing a sound check.

"In God We Trust" was placed on all U.S. bills during the Cold War as a way to express the United States' anti-communist beliefs.

During the Cold War, the BBC planned to air The Sound of Music after a nuclear strike to improve the morale of survivors.

CIA agents used a method of communication based on how their shoelaces were tied during the Cold War.

During the Cold War, MI5 planned to use gerbils at airports to help detect terrorists, secret agents, and subversives.

Source Dictionary of Phrase and Fable by Nigel Rees

Coin

HISTORY

A group of seafaring trading people from Asia Minor called the Lydians were the first in the Western world to make coins in the late 7th century BC.

It had long previously been possible to use pieces of gold, silver or bronze in bartering and exchange. Like the earliest coins, such pieces of metal were not tokens, but were used in consideration of their intrinsic value and exchanged by actual weight.

2,500 years ago, there were large bronze knife-shaped coins in China, called knife money.

Following the Lydians, the Greeks began minting money in the shape of discs, striking them with detailed high relief. They replaced grain as the medium of exchange. Stamped with a likeness of an ear of wheat, the new coins were lighter and easier to transport than grain, and did not get mouldy.

Some of coins that the ancient Greeks minted had bees on them.

The tetradrachm was an Ancient Greek silver coin equivalent to four drachmae. A Samian silver tetradrachim struck in Sicily and stamped Year 1 - or 494BC - is the earliest dated coin.

The first Roman coins were made of brass and weighed up to 1lb each.

The Romans minted coins in the temple of the goddess Juno Moneta. 'Mint' and 'money' come from her name.

Gold and silver coins were issued by the Emperor, while brass coins were issued by the Roman Senate.

Roman gold coins were called aureus, silver coins, denarius and brass ones sestertius

The Romans introduced the familiar serrated edges of today's coins as a way to discourage the practice of shaving off thin slices.

The first coin to show a year date was made in the Seleucid era in modern-day Syria. This was a silver tetradrachm of Demetrios 1 with Greek letters for the numerals 161 corresponding to the year beginning October 152BC.

When Julius Caesar landed in Britain in 55BC he noted the Britons used either bronze or gold coins for money, or iron ingots of fixed weights.

Julius Caesar was the first person to have his face on a coin in 44BC.

British women during the Roman occupation kept up with the latest fashions in Rome by observing the design of coins and statues. Women would see what hairstyle the latest empress was wearing and follow suit.

Japans first copper coins were called Wadōkaichin. The Wadōkaichin were first mentioned for  August 29,  708 on order of Empress Genmei.  Analyses of several findings of Fuhon-sen in Asuka have shown that those coins were manufactured from 683.

The Wadōkaichin was inspired by the Chinese Tang coinage, Kaigentsūhō (Kai Yuan Tong Bao in Chinese). It is a round coin with a square hole in the center, and has the characters "Wadōkaichin" (和同開珎) inscribed on it. The name is derived from the era name Wadō (“Japanese copper”) and could also alternately mean “happiness” and “Kaichin,” which is thought to be related to “Currency.”

The Wadōkaichin was produced by a system of casting, and was initially used as a supplement to the barter system. However, it quickly became the main form of currency in Japan, and remained in circulation until 958 AD.

Offa, king of Mercia was considered the greatest Anglo-Saxon ruler in the eighth century. He was responsible for established a new currency based on the silver penny which, with many changes of design, was the standard coin of England for many centuries.

During the reign of Edward III of England, the initials “DG” were inscribed on all English coins. “DG” is short for “Dei Gratia” which stands for “By the grace of God”. To this day all British coins still have “DG” inscribed on them.

The origin of piggy banks dates back nearly 600 years, in a time when people commonly stored their money at home in common kitchen jars. During The Middle Ages, dishes and pots were made of an orange-colored clay called pygg. When people started saving coins in jars made of this clay, the jars became known as “pygg banks.”

King Henry VIII of England was sometimes called "Old Coppernose." He issued debased coins to fund wars and one coin was mostly copper with a thin layer of silver on top. The coin had a portrait of the king and his projecting nose caused the silver to wear off first exposing the copper underneath.

In Britain the gold half sovereign of Edward VI , struck in London in 1548, bore the date in Roman numerals MDXLV111. It was very shortly after that the newly introduced silver crown and half crown showed for the first time the date of issue in Arabic numerals as 1551.

Eloy Mestrelle, the man who introduced machine-struck coinage to England in 1560, was executed for coin counterfeiting.

Pieces of eight, much coveted by pirates, were silver coins representing eight ‘reales’, the Spanish unit of currency. In 1600, one coin would have been worth the equivalent of £50. They became the world’s most common form of cash from the late 16th Century onwards as Spain built its global empire. They remained legal tender in America until 1857.

The Lord Baltimore penny was the first copper coin issued for circulation in America. It, along with three silver coins, were made as a set specifically for Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore. They were made for the Province of Maryland to be circulated in the Thirteen Colonies.

Lord Baltimore penny

Issac Newton was Master of the Mint around the turn of the 18th century. During this time, he invented the ridges along the edges of coins, still in use today, to prevent theft.

The first U.S official coin in circulation, the Fugio Cent, was designed by Benjamin Franklin. Consisting of 0.36 oz (10 g) of copper, it was minted only in 1787. The coin had the insignia "Mind Your Business" instead of the modern design "In God we Trust" and had 13 chain rings on the back representing the 13 states.

Fugio Cent

Martha Washington’s silver service was the source of the silver that went into the first U.S. coins.

The Coinage Act was passed on April 2, 1792 establishing the United States Mint. The first Mint building was in Philadelphia, then the capital of the United States; it was the first building of the Republic raised under the Constitution.

The first coin minted in the United States was a silver dollar. It was issued on October 15, 1794.

The first copper penny was struck in the Soho Mint in Birmingham by Matthew Boulton around the beginning of the 19th century. Soon afterwards all low-value coins became known as coppers.

The first silver English florin was issued in 1849. The new coin upset many God fearing people as it did not carry the traditional inscriptions “DG” (”Dei Gratia”-“By God’s grace”), or “ED” (“Fidei Defensor”- “Defender of the Faith”). A cholera epidemic was blamed on the evil influence of the florin and it had to be withdrawn.

The world’s largest coins were copper plates used in Alaska around 1850. They weighed 40 kg (90 lb), and were worth £3000.

A dam-as in the phrase “I don’t give a damn”-was a small Indian coin.

As a result of the increased religious sensibility arising from the American Civil War, The US.Congress passed the Coinage Act  on April 22, 1864, mandating that the inscription "In God We Trust" be placed on all coins minted as United States currency. The motto was partly inspired by some words in the final verse of The Star-Spangled Banner, "And this be our motto: In God is our trust."

The United States Congress authorized the minting of the Shield nickel, on May 16, 1866. The Shield nickel was the first United States five-cent piece to be made out of copper-nickel, the same alloy of which American nickels are struck today. Designed by James B. Longacre, the coin was issued from 1866 until 1883, when it was replaced by the Liberty Head nickel. The coin takes its name from the motif on its obverse, and was the first five-cent coin referred to as a "nickel"—silver pieces of that denomination had been known as half dimes.

The Liberty Head nickel was an American five-cent piece. It was struck for circulation from 1883 until 1912, with at least five pieces being surreptitiously struck dated 1913. Although no 1913 Liberty head nickels were officially struck, five are known to exist. While it is uncertain how these pieces originated, they have come to be among the most expensive coins in the world, with one selling in 2010 for $3,737,500.

Since 1909, when presidents were first depicted on circulating coins, all presidents had been shown in profile.

With the issue of United States Sesquicentennial coinage in 1926, Calvin Coolidge became the only living American President to feature on US. coinage.

The 1933 double eagle is a gold coin of the United States with a $20 face value. 445,500 specimens of this Saint-Gaudens double eagle were minted in 1933, the last year of production for the double eagle, but no specimens ever officially circulated and nearly all were melted down, due to the discontinuance of the domestic gold standard in 1933. It currently holds the record for the highest price paid at auction for a single U.S. coin, having been sold for $7.59 million.

The Jefferson nickel has been the five-cent coin struck by the United States Mint since 1938, when it replaced the Buffalo nickel.

As nickel was a strategic war material during World War II, nickels coined from 1942 to 1945 were struck in a copper-silver-manganese alloy which would not require adjustment to vending machines.

A joint resolution of the U.S. Congress signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on July 30, 1956, authorized "In God We Trust" as the U.S. national motto. Following its adoption the phrase was inscribed on all American banknotes as well coins.

The farthing coin ceased to be legal tender in the United Kingdom on December 31, 1960.

Decimal coins- 5p and 10p pieces, equivalent to one shilling and two shilling coins- first appeared in Britain in 1968.

The United Kingdom introduced the British fifty-pence coin in 1969, which replaced, over the following years, the British ten-shilling note, in anticipation of the decimalization of the British currency in 1971, and the abolition of the shilling as a unit of currency anywhere in the world.

The smallest coin in Europe, a Dutch 10 cent, was abolished when the Netherlands joined the euro.

In 1983 the English pound coin replaced the £1 banknote. The Bank of England £1 note ceased to be legal tender five years later.

The Bank of England’s gym lockers didn’t accept the new £1 coin that was introduced in 2017.

FUN COIN FACTS

Two 1p British coins weigh the same as one 2p coin, and two 5p coins weigh the same as one 10p coin.

3 per cent of all £1 coins are fake - their value totals £46 million.

The head of each successive monarch alternates between facing left and right on British coins.

In 2006 the U.S. Mint began shipping new 5-cent coins. The coin has an image of Thomas Jefferson taken from a 1800 Rembrandt Peale portrait in which the president is looking forward.

The largest coin in the world in general global circulation is the Costa Rican 500 colones. Roughly equivalent to the US dollar in value, it is 33mm in diameter.

The most valuable legal tender coin in the world is a $1 million coin from Australia that is worth almost $45 million and is 99% pure gold.

A dime has 118 ridges around the edge, a quarter has 119.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s face is on the dime because of a foundation he started for polio patients by having people mail dimes to the White House, now known as the March of Dimes.

When flipping a coin, more people guess "heads" than "tails." This is because "heads" is intuitively associated with "up" or "positive" concepts, influencing subconscious guesses.

The probability of a U.S. nickel landing on its edge is approximately 1 in 6000 tosses.

African Americans have appeared on three different coins (Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Jackie Robinson).

The US penny is made of copper-plated zinc.

It costs the US mint two cents to make every penny, causing a loss of about $60 million per year.

It costs the US mint over 11 cents to make each 5-cent coin.

If an American coin has the letter “S” printed on it, it was minted in San Francisco; a “D” means it was made in Denver; no letter at all means it was minted in Philadelphia.

A pound of US quarters and a pound of dimes both equal twenty dollars.

If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

The Canadian dollar coin has 11 sides. Due to its depiction of a common loon bird on one side, it is known as “the loonie”.

The Japanese 1-Yen coin is made from aluminium and is so light that it can float on water.

The world’s least valuable coin is probably the tiyin coin in Uzbekistan. 100,000 are worth about $0.50.

The English town of Honiton has a "Hot Penny Day", a parade where children collect thrown coins. The tradition was purportedly started by wealthy people, whom would heat pennies on a stove, throw them into the streets, and laugh at the peasants burning their fingers while picking them up.

Commemorative Star Wars coins became legal tender on the Pacific island of Niue in 2011

People who study and collect coins are called numismatists.

Here is a list of songs with coins in the title.

Sources Daily Mail, So That's Why! Bible

Cognac

A fine brandy has been distilled from wine in the region around Cognac in the Charente region of France since the mid seventeenth century. By the 1780s the name “cognac” was being applied to this quality brandy.

Cognac is made by blending unblended distilled wine from various years. Each Cognac may contain unblended distilled wine from four or more years varying in age from 2-200 years old.

In 1943, during World War II, German bombs struck the Vatican wine cellar and broke about a hundred bottles of fine cognac. There was a pool of liquor six inches deep, and the Swiss soldier who discovered the damage fetched his fellow soldiers to make good use of what might have been a tragic waste.

Source Christianity Today

Coffin

The solid gold coffin of ancient Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun is 73 inches long. The value of its gold is $4,3 million, but the casket is priceless.

In 16th century England it was discovered that some coffins, reopened after several years, had scratch marks inside indicating the unfortunate person had not been dead when buried. So they tied a string to the wrist of each person that led to a bell above ground. A person was assigned to sit at night and listen for the bells, hence the expressions: "graveyard shift" and "saved by the bell."

During 1571 in Hertfordshire, England, a pallbearer dropped Matthew Wall's coffin, waking him up—he lived for over two decades after that.

The fear of being buried alive increased greatly in 1740, after Jacques-Bénigne Winslow, Professor of Anatomy at the Jardin du Roi in Paris, published a paper in Latin on the uncertainty of the signs of death. It was translated into French by a Paris physician, Jean-Jacques Bruhier d'Ablaincourt, who sensationalised it by adding 'amusing and well-attested' stories of people who had not only returned to life in their coffins and graves but also under the hands of surgeons.

The sight of Lord Byron’s coffin being rowed up the Thames prompted grief on a huge scale with hysterical women hurling themselves at his corpse when it was put on public view.

Hans Christian Andersen suffered from the conviction that he would be buried alive. He requested a spyhole drilled into his coffin so he could watch his own funeral service.

General Robert E. Lee was buried barefoot as the coffin was too small to allow for his boots.

The actress Sarah Bernhardt  bought a coffin at the age of 15, in which sometimes she slept.

After Humphrey Bogart died a small, gold whistle was placed in his coffin by his wife, Lauren Bacall.

When James Brown passed away, his coffin was 24 carat gold.

What's the difference between caskets and coffins? Caskets are generally a four-sided (almost always rectangular) funerary box, while a coffin is usually six-sided. The tapered ends of a coffin saves a bit of cost because it uses less material to make.

After Hurricane Katrina, a group of Benedictine monks in Louisiana began selling low-cost, handmade cypress caskets. The state’s Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors issued a cease-and-desist order, claiming that only funeral homes could sell caskets. A judge ruled in favor of the monks.

Sources Saturday Evening Post, History World

Coffeemaker

An American physicist and inventor living in Paris, Benjamin Thompson, who was known as Count Rumford perfected the filter method of brewing coffee by devising a drip coffee pot in 1809. His coffeemaker had gold-plated mesh filters of different sizes for assorted cups, and a boiling water jacket which kept the coffee hot.

A French metalsmith named Laurens invented the first percolator back in 1818.

A Frenchman Louis Bernard Rabaut invented in 1822 an expresso coffee machine. It worked by forcing the hot water through the coffee grounds using steam, instead of merely letting it drip through.

Angelo Moriondo, an Italian inventor from Turin, Italy patented an early version of an espresso machine. On June 6, 1884. Moriondo received a patent for his "new steam machinery for the economic and instantaneous confection of coffee beverage." His machine used steam and pressure to brew coffee quickly, and it featured a boiler and a series of valves and filters. Moriondo's device allowed him to make multiple cups at once for impatient customers at the Grand Hotel Ligure in Turin, which he owned.

James Mason of Franklin, Massachusetts registered the first American patent for a coffee percolator on December 26, 1865, His device still used a downflow method without rising steam and water.

Before the invention of the coffee percolator, European and Americans generally roasted their coffee at home using in particular popcorn poppers and stove-top frying pans.

Percolator By Andreaze - Wikipedia Commons

A German homemaker, Melitta Bentz, invented the coffee filter in 1907 after she lined a tin container with a circular piece of absorbent paper and placed the coffee in the container. She then put her creation over a coffee pot and poured hot water into it and the blotter paper automatically filtered the coffee grinds. Mrs Bentz had experimented with a number of different materials, until she found that her son's blotter paper used for school worked best.

The automatic coffeepot was invented in 1952 by Russell Hobbs (it was their first product). By using a bimetallic strip, which automatically cut out when the coffee was perked, a control could be added which regulates the strength of the coffee according to taste.

The first webcam was deployed at a computer lab at Cambridge University in 1993 – its sole purpose to monitor a coffee pot to help people working in other parts of the building avoid pointless trips to the coffee room by providing, on the user's desktop computer, a live picture of the state of the coffee pot.

The world's largest coffee pot is located in Davidson, Saskatchewan. It measures 24 feet tall, is made of sheet metal and can hold 150,000 eight ounce cups of coffee. 

James Michael Tyler, who played Gunther the barista on Friends was originally meant to only appear as an extra; he remained on the show as he was the only actor there who knew how to operate an espresso machine.

The Revival of Coffeehouse Culture

Coffeehouses and cafés became more popular in the United States and Britain in the 1950s with the rise of the teenager culture. Because of the liquor laws preventing anyone under a certain age from entering bars, American youths would instead meet together in coffee shops or in Britain in cafés. (The English term café, borrowed from the French, comes from the Turkish “kahve”, meaning coffee.)

Later in the century the rise of international coffee shop chains such as Starbucks, (which is named after Starbuck, a character in Moby Dick), as a popular meeting place for western students and urban professionals was a throwback to the coffee house craze of a few centuries ago.

Today a variety of different types of coffees are offered ranging from Café Latte topped with whipped cream to authentic Colombian or Kenyan coffees. In a similar fashion to 300 years ago customers can keep themselves up to date with the news, thanks to the selection of newspapers, which are frequently on offer.

A modern variation since the mid 1990s are internet cafes, where access to the world-wide web is available with a cuppa.

Coffeehouses in England

Initially a substitute for alehouses, coffeehouses became a popular alternative form of meeting-place for the English intelligentsia. With an emphasis on quiet conversation, while drinking coffee or chocolate they would find out the latest political, military and general news.

The first coffee shop in England was opened by a Turkish Jew named Jacob in 1650 at the Angel Inn in Oxford.  Coffee had been introduced to England a few years earlier, but it was still a novelty. Jacob's coffee shop was a popular meeting place for students and scholars, and it helped to popularize coffee in England.

Pasqua Rosée, a Greek or Armenian man, is credited with opening the first coffee house in London in 1652. The coffee house was located in St. Michael's Alley, off Cornhill, in the City of London.

Rosée was a servant to Daniel Edwards, an English merchant who had lived in Smyrna (modern İzmir, Turkey) in the Ottoman Empire. In Smyrna, Edwards had become accustomed to drinking coffee, and he brought Rosée back to London with him to serve him coffee.

Rosée's coffee house was a popular spot for merchants, lawyers, and other professionals. It was also a place where people could discuss politics and current events. The coffee house became so popular that it spawned a number of imitators, and coffee houses soon became a fixture of London life.

Edward Lloyd opened a London coffee house in 1688 which became popular with shipowners and merchants who gathered there to create insurance for their journeys and cargo. It is now Lloyds of London.

Separate coffee shops specialized in different aspects of news. Edward Lloyd’s Coffee Shop for example was of particular interest for merchants who came for the latest information on commerce. Because of the turmoil in the political parties around this time, some of these establishments specialized in becoming public meeting places for people of a particular political persuasion.  Tories, for instance, went to the Cocoa Tree Chocolate House, Whigs to St James’s Coffee House.

In a typical coffeehouse the gentlemen would sit at long communal tables drinking their coffee from tall cups whilst reading newspapers or discussing business or the latest news. These establishments were adorned with bookshelves, gilt-framed pictures and mirrors.  Ladies were excluded from these premises, the only female present would be the lady who poured out the coffee from a coffee-pot, which were ranged at an open fire and she would be separated from the men-folk by a canopied booth.

By 1710 there were over 500 coffeehouses in London, occupying more premises than any other trade in the city. Every respectable Londoner had his favorite house, where his friends or clients could see him at known hours. By this stage they were spreading to provinces, Bristol in particular having a good number of these establishments.

Coffee

COFFEE HISTORY

Around the ninth century Arab shepherds were noticing their sheep, after having eaten berries from an evergreen bush, tended to stay awake all night. They decided to follow their sheep's example, with almost identical results. These berries from the coffee bush were eaten either whole, with fat or used as an ingredient in wine.

The stimulating effect of this coffee berry became increasingly popular, especially in connection with the lengthy religious rites of the Muslims. The orthodox priesthood pronounced it intoxicating and therefore prohibited by the Koran but many found it welcome as a means of keeping them awake and alert during their nightly prayers.

The word "coffee" was at one time a term for wine, but as the Arabs found the black drink helped them to pray, so they honored it with the name they had originally given to wine.

By the fourteenth century coffee production was a jealously guarded secret, and fertile beans couldn't be found outside of Arabia. They were mainly commercially grown and harvested near the port of Mocha.

The Arabs started selling the coffee beans to the Turks who roasted them for use as a beverage rather than eating them whole. The beans were roasted over open fires before being crushed and then boiled in water. They flavoured their coffee with spices during the brewing process.

By the fifteenth century Coffee was being widely lauded in the Middle East by physicians for its medicinal properties. These included combating small pox, eliminating constipation, prompting urination and importantly the wonderful smell it gave to the body.

The first coffee shop, called Kiva Han, opened in Constantinople in the early sixteenth century. Turkey had become the chief distributor of coffee, with markets established in Egypt, Persia, and Venice.

Coffee in early sixteenth century Turkey had become so important that if the man of the house failed to keep his family's pot filled with coffee this provided grounds for his wife to seek divorce.

Turkish coffee Pixabay

The word "coffee" first entered the English language in 1582 via the Dutch koffie, borrowed from the Ottoman Turkish kahve, which was in turn borrowed from the Arabic qahwah (قهوة).

In 1590 Pope Clement VIII was facing the rising tide of Islamic power. The priests advised him, that coffee, the favorite drink of the Ottoman Empire, was part of the infidel threat and a danger to Christianity. The Pope took a sip of the black but fragrant beverage. Far from agreeing to conspiracy theories and "coffee plots," he found it so delicious that he blessed the drink and declared that it would a shame if the infidels were the only ones allowed to enjoy the beverage, thus making it acceptable for Christians.

In early seventeenth century Europe coffee was known as “Arabian Wine.”

By the beginning of the seventeenth century some Egyptians had started adding sugar to coffee to cut its bitterness. This was the first instance of sugar being added to sweeten coffee.

The 17th century Ottoman Sultan Murad VI made the consumption of coffee a capital offense. In addition to closing Istanbul’s many coffeehouses, he would disguise himself as a commoner and stalk the streets of the city with his executioner, beheading any coffee-drinkers that he caught.

The English physician William Harvey who discovered that the circulatory system of blood, was a keen lover of coffee. Though the new drink was still virtually unknown in England, several of William's brothers were early coffee importers so he was  able obtain his own supply.

The first Englishmen who drunk coffee regarded it mainly as an antidote against alcoholism.

Advertisements for coffee in the 1650s in London claimed that it was a cure for scurvy, gout and other ills. The sick were treated with a variety of combinations of coffee and honey, oil and heated butter.

Consignments of coffee started being imported to New England by a trader, Dorothy Jones of Boston, Massachusetts in the early 1660s. This was the first coffee to be sold in North America.

Previously coffee was considered to be merely a therapeutic product by the French aristocracy. However at the exotic parties given by Soliman Aga, the Turkish ambassador to the court of Louis XIV in Paris, coffee was served in tiny cups of egg-shell porcelain. As laid down by Turkish custom, the ambassador offered it to all who come to visit him and he even persuaded the Sun King to give the drink a try. This “newly flavored drink”, as it was called quickly came into fashion in Parisian High Society where the upper classes would loll around in Turkish dressing gowns drinking coffee.

In 1674 a Women’s Petition Against Coffee was printed in London.  It argued against the "grand inconveniences" accruing to women "from the excessive use of that drying, enfeebling liquor£" making men impotent.

Ten years after Dorothy Jones became America’s first coffee trader, the new drink had replaced beer as the favorite breakfast beverage for many New England colonists.

In 1723 Captain Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, a young French naval officer brought a live cutting of a coffee tree from a French botanical garden to the Caribbean island of Martinique, where he planted it on his own estate under armed guard. He originally obtained his seedling after a moonlight raid of a greenhouse in the French king's garden.
The voyage was a difficult one. Among the incidents that de Clieu experienced on board was an attack by pirates, a violent storm and an attempt by a jealous passenger, who attempted to steal his coffee seedling and, when unable to get the plant away from him, tore off a branch. As the ship neared its destination water grew scarce but the young coffee tree was kept alive because de Clieu shared with it his limited ration of drinking water.

54 years after the Frenchman Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu planted the first coffee tree in Martinique, it has yielded a total of nearly 20 million trees.

Coffee is credited with helping to spark the Age of Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th century Europe. Before coffee was introduced to that part of the world, people often drank the beer/alcohol throughout the day because it was safer than water. Coffee, rich with caffeine, a stimulant, swept across the continent and replaced alcohol, a depressant.

King Gustav III of Sweden (1746-1792) was disgusted by coffee and convinced it had bad effects on one’s health. To prove that the beverage was unhealthy, King Gustav experimented with two convicted prisoners, one drank enormous amounts of coffee, the other one, tea. The condemned men remained very much alive and even outlived King Gustav.

After the Boston Tea Party, many Americans switched to drinking coffee during the Revolutionary War because drinking tea had become unpatriotic.

American Civil War Union soldiers were issued 36 pounds of coffee a year and the word "coffee" appeared more in journal entries than "war," "bullet," "cannon," "slavery," "mother" or "Lincoln."

In the mid 1880s Joel Cheek , a partner in the Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, a wholesale grocery firm in Nashville, Tennessee met Roger Nolley Smith, a British coffee broker who could reportedly tell the origin of a coffee simply by smelling the green beans. The pair developed a coffee that allowed less flavor to escape during the roasting process. In 1892 their coffee was served at the Maxwell House Hotel in Nashville where it has become so popular that the hotel owner ordered that no other coffee should be served to his guests. This blend became known as Maxwell House Coffee. For many years, until the late 1980s, it was the largest-selling coffee in the United States.

Maxwell House newspaper ad from 1921

In Chicago, a Japanese American chemist, Satori Kato, invented soluble “instant” coffee in 1901.

The first mass produced instant coffee was the invention of George Constant Washington, an English chemist living in Guatemala. In 1906, while waiting for his wife one day to join him in the garden for coffee, he observed dried coffee on the spout of the silver coffeepot. Intrigued he started experimenting, which lead to his discovery of easily dissolving coffee. Three years later he put his product, Red E Coffee, (a pun on "ready") on the market.

 Advert from The New York Times, February 23, 1914.

After growing tired of ground coffee leftovers in her coffee cup, German housewife Melitta Bentz invented the paper coffee filter brewing system. Bentz experimented with different items but ended up using blotting paper from her son Willy's school exercise book and a brass pot punctured using a nail.

Bentz was granted a patent on June 20, 1908, and set up a company with her husband and two sons as its first employees. After contracting a tinsmith to manufacture the devices, they sold 1,200 coffee filters at the 1909 Leipzig fair.

A Melitta coffee filter. By Elke Wetzig (Elya) 

During the First World War, US soldiers called their coffee “a cup of George”. The nickname was derived from the name of Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who in 1913 banned alcohol from being served on U.S. Navy warships. The sailors began to drink more coffee, which they then nicknamed "Joe."

In order to fund their sea voyage to the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, Brazilian athletes loaded their ship with coffee and sold it as they made their way.

Nestlé introduced a more advanced coffee refining process in the late 1930s. Nescafe, the first truly successful instant coffee, was launched by Nestlé on July 24, 1938. The Nescafe brand is a combination of the words “Nestlé” and “café.”

Due to the blockading of German U-boats during the Second World War, there was a shortage of many popular items of food and drink in Britain. To counter the housewives came up with an abundance of creative substitutes. For instance were roasted and used as a substitute for coffee.

Joe Sheridan was a barman at the Shannon Airport in Ireland. He had many tired and exhausted customers at his bar, who after a long flight across the Atlantic could well do with a "pick-up." His remedy was a strong cup of coffee fortified with a dash of whiskey, and topped with whipped cream. The travel writer Stanton Delaplane started publicizing Sheridan’s Irish coffee in 1952 after he discovered it during one of his trips.

The Pan-American Coffee Bureau coined the phrase "coffee break" in 1952, and ran a $2 million advertising campaign with the message that a "coffee break" would give workers "a needed moment of relaxation along with a caffeine jolt."

So, picture this: East Germany, needing a caffeine fix, strikes a deal with Vietnam in the 80s. They offered Vietnam a sweet package - fancy equipment, know-how to grow coffee, even built them some new buildings. In return, Vietnam would plant a bunch of coffee trees and share half the harvest with East Germany for 20 years.  Here's the twist: bummer timing! Coffee trees take a while to grow, and wouldn't you know it, East Germany dips out of the scene in 1989. By the time those beans were ready to be picked in 1990, East Germany was no more.

Vietnam wasn't all out though. They got the equipment, learned the tricks of the trade, and ended up becoming the world's number two coffee producer, thanks in part to this deal. East Germany might not have gotten their cup of joe, but Vietnam came out a winner in the long run.

Expenditure on coffee in Britain first overtook the amount spent on tea in 1998.

At the beginning of the new millennium, tea was the most popular drink on this planet. However in America coffee was more popular and such was the Americans love for the beverage that it helped it to become the world’s second best selling consumer item after oil.

In 2012 a cup of coffee containing 13,200 litres made in London earned a Guinness World Record for the largest ever cup of coffee.

FUN COFFEE FACTS

Coffee comes from an edible fruit -- The coffee cherry is sweet and tastes like watermelon, rosewater, and hibiscus all at once.

In 2002, scientists found that sprinkling coffee grounds in the garden helps deter snails and slugs.

Instant coffee

A car called ‘Car-puccino’ drove from Manchester to London powered by ground coffee in 2010.

Coffee is a great fertiliser for acid-loving plants like hydrangeas, camellias and roses.

In 2010, the Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl was hospitalized after he overdosed... on coffee.

Brazil has been the world’s largest exporter of coffee for over 150 years. It accounted for around 80% of the world’s coffee production in the 1920s but that figure has currently fallen to around a third.

Brazilian coffee plantations, covering some 27,000 km2 (10,000 sq mi), are mainly located in the southeastern states of Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Paraná where the environment and climate provide ideal growing conditions.

The only U.S. State that grows their own coffee beans is Hawaii.

More than 400 billion cups of coffee are drunk around the world every year.

Coffee beans are actually tasteless until they're roasted.

Coffee should not be brewed using boiling hot water. Doing so can lead to "overextraction", which leaves your coffee with a bitter taste. The ideal temperature for brewing is 96C/205F

Coffee doesn't taste like it smells because our saliva wipes out 300 of the 631 chemicals that combine to form its complex aroma.

Coffee beans are actually the pit of a berry, which makes them a fruit.

Most instant coffee is made from Robusta beans grown in Vietnam.

The standard unit for measuring coffee volume is the “bag” which is equal to 60kg of coffee beans.

The world consumes close to 2.25 billion cups of coffee every day.

The Dutch drink more coffee than any other nation, an average of 2.414 cups each, every day.

The United States consumes the most coffee as a nation, but per capita, it's equivalent to less than one cup of coffee (0.93) per person per day.

One third of the tap water used for drinking in North America is used to brew daily cups of coffee.

It takes approximately 37 gallons of water to make just one cup of coffee when you account for inputs needed to grow and process the beans.

Farmers Union Iced Coffee out-sells Coca Cola in South Australia by almost three to one – making it the only place in the world where a milk drink is more popular than Coke.

The world’s most expensive coffee is Kopi Luak with retail prices reaching US$700 per  kilogramme. It is made from beans excreted by the luak (palm civet) of Indonesia.

The Quran allows coffee because it defines intoxicants as which “covers the intellect,” i.e., causes inebriation or drunkenness like beer, or euphoria such as cocaine or amphetamines. Caffeine is not an intoxicant in that sense, but rather only a mild stimulant and hence permissible.

The Turks are so into their coffee that their word for ‘breakfast’ translates literally to ‘before coffee.’

Starbucks coffee is really, really caffeinated. A tall (12oz.) Starbucks coffee, which has 260 mg of caffeine, has the caffeine content of more than three Red Bulls.

Only thirty-five percent of coffee drinkers drink their coffee black.

Coffee spills from your cup after you take 7 to 10 steps because the rhythm of walking perfectly oscillates the liquid in the cup.

Source Daily Express

William “Buffalo Bill” Cody

William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody on February 26, 1846 in Le Claire, Iowa, United States.

His parents were Isaac Cody and Mary Ann Bonsell Laycock Cody. Isaac was a farmer and lay minister, while Mary Ann worked as a school teacher and also helped with the farming.

Cody earned his nickname due to his contract to supply Kansas Pacific Railroad workers with buffalo meat during the construction of the railroad. He personally shot 4,280 bison in seventeen months.

Cody was employed as a scout for a time by the United States Army. In January 1872, Cody was a scout for Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich, the fourth son of Alexander II of Russia, during his highly publicized royal hunt.

Cody was active in the concordant bodies of Freemasonry, being initiated in Platte Valley Lodge No. 32, North Platte, Nebraska, on March 5, 1870. He received his 32nd degree in Scottish Rite of Freemasonry in 1894.

Cody founded Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1883 in the area of North Platte, Nebraska. It was a circus-like attraction that toured annually with real cowboys and Indians.

In 1884 Annie Oakley approached Buffalo Bill Cody about joining his touring company, and the following year she began to appear as a performer in the Wild West Show. She was an immediate hit, and before long the posters for the show prominently featured her.

Cody took the show to Great Britain in celebration of the Jubilee year of Queen Victoria opening in London on May 9, 1887. Her Royal Highness attended a performance and wrote in her diary afterwards that it was "most exciting."

On October 29, 1901 outside Lexington, North Carolina, a freight train crashed into part of the train carrying Buffalo Bill's show. 110 horses were killed by the accident or were put down later. No people were killed but Annie Oakley's injuries were so severe she was told she would never walk again, though she eventually did.

Cody died of kidney failure on January 10, 1917 at the age of 70, surrounded by family and friends at his sister's house in Denver.

Some 25,000 viewed the body, and the Colorado National Guard marched in the funeral procession.

Code

Cryptography is the art of writing or solving coded writing.

The earliest known use of cryptography is found in non-standard hieroglyphs carved into monuments from the Old Kingdom of Egypt circa 1900 BC.

Ahmad al-Qalqashandi (1355–1418) wrote the Subh al-a 'sha, a 14-volume encyclopedia which included a section on cryptology. The list of ciphers in this work included both substitution and transposition, and for the first time, a cipher with multiple substitutions for each plaintext letter.

Binary code was invented in 1679 by German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm von Liebniz  In search for a new mathematical model to replace the decimal system, von Liebniz read a 3000 year old Chinese book I Ching. Fascinated by the simplicity of Yin and Yang, Liebniz used this philosophy to create the binary number system.

The Vigenère Cipher, invented in 1553 and using various alphabets, was not cracked until 1854 by British computer pioneer Charles Babbage. No other code has taken as long to crack.

During the Second World War, Bletchley Park was the site of the United Kingdom's main decryption establishment, where ciphers and codes of several Axis countries were decrypted, most importantly the ciphers generated by the German Enigma and Lorenz machines.  

Below is the Enigma Model G, used by the German military intelligence service 

Wikipedia

American cryptanalyst Elizebeth Friedman broke 4,000 codes during World War II and brought down a Nazi spy ring across South America by cracking an early version of the Enigma machine with pen and paper. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover took credit for her work until reports were declassified in 2008.

America recruited 29 Navajo speaking men during World War II, who later came to be called, Navajo code talkers. They had created a brand new set of code words in Navajo language, which even if intercepted could not be translated by the enemy forces.

For the many members of the Women's Royal Naval Service (Wrens) who worked at Bletchley Park, their posting was to HMS Pembroke V.

Steganography is indeed a technique of hiding information within other information in such a way that it is not easily detectable by anyone who does not know where or how to look for it. This technique has been used throughout history for secret communication, both in times of war and peace.

Phyllis Latour Doyle was a British spy during World War II, who used knitting as a means of recording messages. Specifically, she would create codes using the spacing of the knit and purl stitches, and then encode messages by creating deliberate errors in the knitting pattern. To the untrained eye, the knitting would look like any other piece of knitting, but to those who knew the code, the hidden message could be easily deciphered.

Source Wikipedia

Coconut

The coconut is not actually a nut, it’s a drupe, like a peach or a plum.

In Java and Nicobar the traveler Marco Polo became the first European to have encountered the coconut. He called it "the Pharaoh’s nut," describing it as a fruit full of flavor, sweet as sugar, and white as milk.

The coconut was originally called just ‘coco’ in English in the 16th century. Coco was a Spanish word meaning "head" or "skull", from the three indentations on the coconut shell that resemble facial features

The 96,000 people who visited the The Derby Exhibition of 1839 were able to view a coconut.

Coconuts played an important part during World War One. US gas mask manufacturers found that masks using coconut carbon were superior at filtering noxious substances, and saved many lives as a result.

The water inside young coconuts can be used as a substitute for blood plasma. Coconut water was during World War Two as a substitute for blood plasma in transfusions.

During the 2013 elections in The Maldives, a coconut was detained on the suspicion of 'vote-rigging' through the use of black magic. A magician was called in and established that the coconut was innocent.

The coconut is so versatile that in Malaysia it is called 'pokok seribu guna' - the tree of a thousand uses.

The sea coconut, also known as coco de mer, or double coconut, is endemic to the islands of Praslin and Curieuse in the Seychelles. The mature fruit is 40–50 cm in diameter and weighs 15–30 kg, and contains the largest seed in the plant kingdom.

A female Coco de mer palm tree with some seeds in the growth. Wkipedia Commons

Each year there are approximately 20 billion coconuts produced worldwide.

Most of the world production is in tropical Asia,. Indonesia is the world’s largest coconut producer, followed by the Philippines and India.

In Thailand, pigtailed macaques have been trained to harvest coconuts on large plantations. Males can harvest up to 1,600 coconuts in one day, while a human overlords can only harvest 80-100.

In 1956, a woman was awarded $300 in damages by the city of Miami after her foot was hurt by a falling coconut. Assistant City attorney Jack Smith argued that the city should have been on notice that the coconut was a hazard, because "a reasonable man would assume it was about to fall when it turns brown".

In 2006, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones fractured his skull falling from a coconut palm in Fiji.

Falling coconuts kill 150 people every year.

According to a report in 1984, 2.5 per cent of injuries treated at a hospital in New Guinea were caused by falling coconuts.

The famous gag in Monty Python and the Holy Grail of using coconuts for horse clops was NOT out of budget necessity, but was in fact the first idea they had which served as a starting point for the film.

In 2007 a record number of 5,567 people clipclopped coconut shells together to launch Monty Python’s Spamalot musical.

Sources Eat Out magazine, Daily Express, Daily Mail

Cocoa

A drink used to be made by the Aztecs for the gods which had the ingredients of ground cocoa mixed in with spices and corn.

About 40 cocoa beans are contained in each cocoa pod.

In 1866 Cadburys became the first company in England to sell cocoa as a drink. The cocoa beans were roasted, ground and then mixed with sugar to make a powder. Customers added hot water or milk to the  powder to make what became a much-liked drink.

The West African island country of São Tomé and Príncipe was popularly known as the Chocolate Islands in the early 1900s, when it was the world's top exporter of cocoa.

Cadbury uses more than sixty thousand tonnes of cocoa each year, in the United Kingdom alone.

A person would have to drink more than 12 cups of hot cocoa to equal the amount of caffeine found in one cup of coffee.

An extract of cocoa has been found to be more effective than fluoride in keeping your teeth healthy.

West Africa collectively supplies two thirds of the world's cocoa crop.  The largest producer of cocoa is Ivory Coast at more than twice as much as second-placed Ghana.

Source Greatfacts.com