There are many unusual facts about coffee and some are very surprising. Everyone probably already knows that coffee beans were discovered in Ethiopia by a goatherd around 800 AD. He noticed that his goats became more playful, after eating the ‘berries’ of a particular bush. He investigated and discovered coffee beans. How he managed to make his first coffee after that is a matter of speculation.

You may know that antioxidants are very beneficial to us. They can stop the aging process and fight free radicals that can cause cancer. Red wine, grape juice, and green tea are rich in antioxidants, but a cup of coffee has more antioxidants than a cup of grape juice. Who would have thought?

Apart from oil, coffee is the most traded commodity in the world. Americans typically start their day with a cup of coffee and actually consume around 400 million cups a day. It was first brought to New York, then called New Amsterdam, in the mid-17th century. It wasn’t very popular until after 1773 and the Boston Tea Party when settlers dumped boxes of tea into the sea in Boston Harbor. Before this, tea was as popular in America as it was in Britain. Tax increases saw their popularity diminish.

The most expensive coffee in the world is not Jamaica’s Blue Mountain coffee. It’s a rare coffee called Kopi Luwak that costs around $ 600 a pound, though prices fluctuate like they do with other staples. The really amazing thing about this coffee is that the beans are first eaten by a Sumatran bobcat. They are only used after the cat has shed them.

Coffee has had its ups and downs throughout the centuries, and was banned in Mecca in the early 16th century as it was believed that it could stimulate radical thinking. Italian clergymen also tried to ban it in the same century because they thought it was satanic, but this attempt was doomed to failure as the pope, Clement VII, loved drinking and removed the ban. He even baptized the coffee!

Coffee is almost the national drink of the Turks now, but the Ottoman Emperor Murad IV imposed punishments on people who drank coffee, which included being thrown into the sea or beaten.

In Europe, the Swedes outlawed all coffee-making equipment in 1746 and then in 1777, in Prussia, Frederick the Great declared that beer was superior to coffee because he wanted to prevent the possible collapse of the brewing industry.

It is clear that since its discovery, coffee has been loved and hated.