Pub trivia: Coffee
Coffee
Tea is ok but it doesn't make your ears tingle and your eyes vibrate like a nice strong cup of coffee. It's been said that coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world behind crude oil. Sounds about right.
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Fact
Coffee was first drunk in Ethiopia in the 9th Century AD. According to legend, it was discovered by a young farmboy named Kaldi, whose goats started dancing after ingesting coffee beans. While there's no evidence for Kaldi's existence, he's been adopted as the honorary "inventor" of the drink.
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Fact
The coffee filter was invented by a German housewife in 1908. Melitta Bentz was tired of coffee grounds making her drink taste bitter, so she decided to filter them out using a slip of blotter paper her son had been using for homework.
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Fact
Coffee beans aren't beans at all. They're merely the seeds of the fruit that grow on coffee plants.
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Fact
When Muslim traders first brought coffee to Venice from the Middle East, Italian clergymen condemned it as a drink fit for infidels. But Pope Clement VIII loved the taste so much he decided to "claim it" for Christianity by having the drink baptised in 1600.
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Fact
Nowadays when people say "mocha" they mean coffee mixed with hot chocolate. But this stems from the fact that there's actually a type of coffee bean from Yemen called "mocha" that has a naturally chocolatey flavour.
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Fact
The financial landmark Lloyd's of London started out as a coffeehouse. Back in 1688, sailors would meet at Edward Lloyd's establishment to discuss shipping insurance over coffee. Later, after Lloyd himself died, the regulars formed the Society of Lloyd's and it took off from there.
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Fact
Caffeine is present in coffee plants as a natural defence mechanism, putting animals off eating the fruit.
