<I found this in the "fluff" text of a porn-spam email. That alone
makes it worth passing along. -AJM>


A brief history of coffee for the interested party:

Coffee was first discovered in Eastern Africa in an area we know
today as Ethiopia. A popular legend refers to a goat herder by the
name of Kaldi, who observed his goats acting unusually frisky after
eating berries from a bush. Curious about this phenomena, Kaldi tried
eating the berries himself. He found that these berries gave him a
renewed energy. The news of this energy laden fruit quickly spread
throughout the region.

Monks hearing about this amazing fruit, dried the berries so that
they could be transported to distant monasteries.They reconstituted
these berries in water, ate the fruit, and drank the liquid to
provide stimulation for a more awakened time for prayer.

Coffee berries were transported from Ethiopia to the Arabian
peninsula, and were first cultivated in what today is the country of
Yemen.

From there, coffee traveled to Turkey where coffee beans were roasted
for the first time over open fires. The roasted beans were crushed,
and then boiled in water, creating a crude version of the beverage we
enjoy today.

Coffee first arrived on the European continent by means of Venetian
trade merchants. Once in Europe this new beverage fell under harsh
criticism from the Catholic church. Many felt the pope should ban
coffee, calling it the drink of the devil. To their surprise, the
pope, already a coffee drinker, blessed coffee declaring it a truly
Christian beverage.

Coffee houses spread quickly across Europe becoming centers for
intellectual exchange. Many great minds of Europe used this beverage,
and forum, as a springboard to heightened thought and creativity.

In the 1700's, coffee found its way to the Americas by means of a
French infantry captain who nurtured one small plant on its long
journey across the Atlantic. This one plant, transplanted to the
Caribbean Island of Martinique, became the predecessor of over 19
million trees on the island within 50 years. It was from this humble
beginning that the coffee plant found its way to the rest of the
tropical regions of South and Central America.

Coffee was declared the national drink of the then colonized United
States by the Continental Congress, in protest of the excessive tax
on tea levied by the British crown.

Espresso, a recent innovation in the way to prepare coffee, obtained
its origin in 1822, with the innovation of the first crude espresso
machine in France. The Italians perfected this wonderful machine and
were the first to manufacture it. Espresso has become such an
integral part of Italian life and culture, that there are presently
over 200,000 espresso bars in Italy.

Today, coffee is a giant global industry employing more than 20
million people. This commodity ranks second only to petroleum in
terms of dollars traded worldwide. With over 400 billion cups
consumed every year, coffee is the world's most popular beverage. If
you can imagine, in Brazil alone, over 5 million people are employed
in the cultivation and harvesting of over 3 billion coffee plants.

Sales of premium specialty coffees in the United States have reached
the multi billion dollar level, and are increasing significantly on
an annual basis.


<So there ya go. The history of coffee according to "Hot Young
MILFS!.org" Are you as titillated as I am?>