We all know that coffee awakens the nation, but what else is there to know about coffee that
you may not have heard of?
In 2010 a team from a BBC science program drove from Manchester to London in a converted
1988 Volkswagen Scrirocco, using roasted coffee granules as fuel. It took 10 hours and they
used about 70kg of coffee. The car got nicknamed The Car-puccino. We wonder why?!
During the Age of Sail the men working for the Royal Navy lacked coffee aboard their ships and
resorted to dissolving burnt bread in water. Given we can only imagine what this would taste
like we can’t condemn it as such…but let’s just say we are very happy there is no lack of coffee
currently!
We all know that coffee is popular, but can you guess just how popular? How many cups a
year? Well we have the answer for you: approximately 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed
each year. This makes coffee the world’s most popular drink. It appears Scandinavia is in
the lead with the most cups of coffee per person, per year. And apparently the world record
for coffee intake is 82 cups in 7 hours. We do not recommend you try this – after all, coffee is
supposed to be a nice treat!
If you want to know exactly how dependent the world is on coffee, you can ponder the fact
that during WWII coffee bombs (bags of coffee) were dropped in Germany to turn the people
AGAINST the government as there was a general lack of coffee during the war. We wonder who
came up with this? The Brits, the French, or the Americans? And maybe more interestingly, did
it succeed? Did people turn against the government in favour of…coffee?! Maybe it’s lucky that
today here in Britain there’s an ample supply of coffee beans, coffee grinders, French presses
and coffee/espresso machines. Long live the Queen. Phew.