Did Goats Discover Coffee? The Start of a Revolution

Welcome to Strange History, where we explore the weird and the wonderful history that

has shape the world into what it is today. Strange History is proudly part

of the dark Cast podcast network posted on spreaker Go check out all the amazing

podcasts there. Today, we will be talking about my favorite food group,

coffee. You can't talk about coffee without talking about Ethiopia, and Ethiopia has

some amazing history that is key to the world's history. So not only do

they produce some pretty amazing coffee, but they are rich in history. First

founded in nine eighty BC, Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa.

It is also the second most populated country in Africa, with a population of

over one hundred and six million people, making it second to Nigeria. Ethiopia

also stands as the only African country that has never been colonized. Ethiopia is

the only country that actually works on a twelve hour time system. Ethiopia does

not observe daylight savings. The daytime cycle begins at dawn, which is six

AM, and ends at dusk, which is five fifty nine PM. The

nighttime cycle begins at dusk, which is six PM and ends at dawn,

which is five fifty nine am. Let's get back to coffee, one of

my favorite subjects and is a main staple of my diet. Coffee was first

discovered in Ethiopius. You can say it is the creation place of the popular

brew. It is confirmed that coffee was first discovered in Ethiopia and moved around

the world through slave trading and other means. There are several accounts of exactly

how it was discovered. One account is that a ninth century goat herder in

Ethiopia noticed how energized his goats became whenever they fed from a certain bush.

This led him to try and chew on the fruit from the bush himself.

He took these fruits to a monastery and a monk threw them into the fire.

The enticing aroma attracted other monks, and the fruit was dissolved into hot

water, yielding the world's first cup of coffee. Another fact about Ethiopia,

the history of the rastafari, can be traced back to Africa through the movement

that was started and developed in Jamaica. The word Rastafarian is derived from ross,

meaning chief. In Ethiopia's official language, Amharik and Tafari, the first

name of former Ethiopian emperor Hele Selassie. He was also the spiritual leader of

the Rastafarians, who was believed to be an incarnation of God. When coffee

was first discovered, Arab Sufi monks used the beverage for a similar purpose that

people drink it today to get a boost and to stay awake, their goal

back then to reach divine consciousness and midnight prayers. There word coffee has roots

in several different languages. In Yemen, it earned the name gawa, which

was originally a Romantic term for wine. It later became the Turkish kava,

and then Dutch coffee and finally coffee in English. The modern version of the

roasted coffee originated in Arabia. Yet another fact about Ethiopia. The biblical ark

of the Covenant holding the Ten Commandments is believed to be housed in a church

in Ethiopia. No one, not even the specially chosen guardian, is allowed

to look to confirm that it's actually there. The person chosen to guard the

arc is never allowed to leave the church and stand guard over the elusive vessel.

And a lifelong commitment that we could not even imagine the life of solitude

and diligent servitude to something that the world has revered for centuries is something that

we can only aspire to. Even I can't stick to a New Year's resolution

for more than a week. An alternative story about the origins of coffee has

us believed that coffee was first discovered by a chik named Omar, disciple to

the Sufi mystic while an exile from Mocha. Omar, who was famous for

his ability to cure the sick through prayer, lived in a desert cave near

Osab. Somewhat hungry, Omar one day chewed some berries, only to find

them better oaths of them, but this only made them hard. Finally,

he tried boiling them, resulting in a fragrant brown liquid, which in an

instant gave him unnatural and exceptional energy and allowed him to stay awake for days

on end. His miracle discovery was held in such great awe he was allowed

to return home to Mocha and elevated to the saint hood. While coffee percolated

around the Arab world, how did we start adding milk to our coffee?

Milk coffee is a category of coffee based drinks made with milk. John knew

Hooff, the Dutch ambassador of China, is credited with the first person drink

coffee with milk when he experimented with it around sixteen sixty. Coffee drinkers are

less likely to contract deadly diseases. Studies have shown that patients with higher levels

of caffeine in their blood were less likely to contract Alzheimer's disease. They also

found that coffee had a positive result on type two diabetes patients and even protected

women from skin cancer. Coffee decreases muscle pain. It is often advised you

eat a high protein breakfast after doing your morning cardio. However, adding a

cup of coffee to your post workout routine can decrease your muscle pain by forty

eight percent. That's pretty astounding. Dark roast have less caffeine than light roasted

coffee. The strong flavor of dark roasts tend to make us think that it's

stronger. That is actually not the case. Although the dark roast taste better,

light roast have more caffeine in them, since the actual roasting process burns

off more caffeine. Adding cream to your coffee will prevent it from cooling faster.

As it turns out, cream cools about twenty percent slower than black coffee,

and by adding it to your coffee, you can keep it warm for

a little bit longer than by simply drinking it. Black coffee, like alcohol,

has a long history of prohibition, attracting fear and suspicion and religious disquiet

and hypocrisy. Have the zell It's got their way, there would not be

very many coffee houses open today. Be drinking was banned by jurists and scholars

meeting in Mecca in fifteen eleven. The opposition was led by the Meccan governor

car Beg, who was afraid that coffee would foster opposition to his rule by

bringing men together and allowing them to discuss his failings. Thus was born's coffee

association with sedition and revolution. It was decreed sinful, but the controversy over

whether it was intoxicating or not raged on over the next thirteen years until the

band was friendly rescinded in fifteen twenty four by an order of the Ottoman Turkish

Sultan Salem with Grand Mufti mement Episode l Amede, issuing a fatwa allowing coffee

to be drunk again. Beg was executed for his troubles by command of the

Sultan himself, who further proclaimed coffee be sacred. There you have it,

a man was killed over coffee. In Cairo, there was a similar ban

in fifteen thirty two coffee houses in coffee warehouses were ransacked. Coffee was known

as the Devil's cup. Did not take long for coffee to travel short distances

to the European mainland, where it first landed in Venice. On the back

of a lucrative trade. The city enjoyed its Mediterranean neighbors. Initially, however,

coffee was met with the suspicion and religious prejudice that had suffered in the

Middle East. The word on the street, filtered back from the intrepid European

travelers to the mysterious and mystical lands of the East, was that that equally

mysterious, exotic and intoxicating liquor caused trouble the Catholics. It was a bitter

invention of Satan, carrying the whiff of Islam, and it seemed suspiciously like

a substitute for wine and is used in the Eucharist and any event, it

was outlawed. Such was the consternation that Pope Clement had to intervene. He

sampled the coffee for himself and decreed that it was indeed a Christian as well

as Muslim drink. On tasting it, he wittily declared, this devil's drink

is so delicious, we should cheat the devil by baptizing it. From then

on, coffee has been dubbed the devil's drink or a devil's cup. England's

first coffee house was established in Oxford in sixteen fifty at the Angel in the

parish of Saint Peter in the East, by the Jewish gentleman named Jacob,

in a building now known as the Grand Cafe. London's first coffee house opened

in sixteen fifty two in Saint Michael's Alley, near in Saint Michael and Cornhill's

churchyard. It was grown by Pasqual Rose, a Greek man who in sixteen

seventy two also set up a coffee stall in Paris. By sixteen seventy five

there were more than three thousand coffee houses in England alone. Some even had

bed and breakfasts for overnight guests, known as schools of the wise. Coffee

houses became known for fostering, stimulating conversation. They were places for learning about

the state of the world and enjoying everything from music and dance to chess and

debate. An implicate threat to religious gathering places, which is why it caused

such a kafuffle. As it made its way around the world. You could

almost say that coffee houses are the Internet of today. This led to the

fact that coffee is blamed for England's absentee husbands as men, instead of being

home with their families, they were in the coffee houses discussing news, hilosophizing

and well being men women were not allowed. Coffee cultivation then spread to the

Americas. The first coffee seedling planted in the Americas was carried by ship from

the Royal Botanical Garden in Paris to Martinique around seventeen twenty three by a young

naval officer named Gabriel de clu. This one coffee plant is credited with the

growth of more than eighteen million offspring on the island over the next fifty years,

beginning the crops fruitful yet fraught Caribbean in Central American history, the coffee

industry in Brazil, now the world's number one coffee producer, began with a

few seedlings poached from French Guyana by Francesco de Mello Piletta, when the French

governor refused the Portuguese military member's initial request to share. Legend has it that

Paletta was able to captivate the governor's wife by using his good looks and received

her bouquet upon leaving, with what would become Brazil's first coffee seeds buried inside.

Scandalous, the French pushed colonial coffee production to its breaking point. Though

the French started growing coffee on their territory of Santa Domingo in seventeen thirty four

using African slave labor, and by seventeen eighty eight the Caribbean island was responsible

for half the world's supply. The harsh working conditions of the coffee and the

sugarcane plantations, combined with the French legislature's in action on slavery or civil rights

appeals, eventually culminating in the Haitian Revolution, fought from seventeen ninety one to

eighteen o three. Saint Domingu, now Haiti, ceased to be a major

coffee producer following its declaration of independence in eighteen o four. Coffee production then

expanded through Central America and into Mexico. Coffee cultivations spread like wildfire through the

New World tropical locales in the local eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reaching Costa Rica

in seventeen seventy nine, Mexico in seventeen ninety, El Salvador in eighteen forty,

and Guatemala in eighteen fifty. Global exports of the region's roasted coffee got

an additional boost in nineteen fourteen with the opening of the Panama Canal, enabling

an easy access to coffee plantations along the Pacific. For the very first time,

coffee actually replaced beer as Europe's breakfast beverage. One of the otter accusations

lobbed at coffee from a modern perspective was that it would hurt society by making

people drink less alcohol. At the time, beer and wine were the default

breakfast beverages throughout Europe, and coffee presented an appealing alternative that would help people

begin a day alert and energized. One Prussian king didn't take kindly to this

cultural shift in seventeen seventy seven, Frederick the Great issued a manifesto proclaiming beer

superiority to coffee, partily complaining of the money that goes out of the country

in consequence to encourage domestic beer sales and raising children on beer soup. Just

like his Majesty, Frederick imposed a number of restrictions on coffee and hired four

hundred disabled soldiers as sniffers to track down unsolicited roasters. The restrictions were lifted

after his death in seventeen eighty six. So let's just backtrack a minute and

visit the fact that we fed our kids beer soup for breakfast at that point.

Another ill fated attempt to eradicate the menace of coffee drinking began under Swedish

ruler Gustaf the Third in the late seventeen hundreds. Two identical twins had their

death sentences commuted to life imprisonment on the condition that one of them drink three

pots of coffee and the other three posts of tea every day from then on.

The king was assassinated in seventeen ninety two before he could see his experiments

final results. But to let you know, the tea Drinker died first.

Drinking coffee becomes patriotic after the Boston Tea Party. Though coffee houses had been

introduced, tea remained the beverage of choice throughout Britain's American colonies until the British

Tea Party of seventeen seventy three, planned in a Boston coffee house called the

Green Dragon. The act of protest against the Crown's tea tax drove large swaths

of patriotic colonists, including John Adams, to start their mornings with coffee instead

of tea, a shift in preference that endures to this day. Did you

know that the New York Stock Exchange was actually created in a coffee house?

It wasn't just philosophical books and radical revolutions that sprung from coffee houses as the

hub of ideas in the United States. The New York Stock Exchange started out

trading in the now closed Tonteen Coffee House from seventeen ninety two to eighteen seventy.

Similarly, after months of discussion, the Bank of New York was decisively

established to serve the city's shipping industry at Saint George's Square coffee House in June

of seventeen eighty four. A folk music revival and influx of espresso sipping Italian

immigrants during their beat generation era of the fifties and sixties helped bring coffee houses

to the forefront of American life and generations renewed interest in high qualities specialty brews.

Alfred Pete is known as the grandfather of the gourmet coffee craze for founding

Pete's Coffee and Tea in Berkeley in nineteen sixty six, which grew from one

day area retail outlet to a chain of more than one hundred and fifty stores

across the ten States. He also credited with mentoring the founders of Starbucks,

among other major coffee entrepreneurs, now the world's most popular coffee brand. Starbucks

started with a single Seattle store front in nineteen seventy one and was bought in

nineteen eighty seven by Howard Schultz, who nationalized the business. In large part

thanks to Schultzen's predecessors, the US is now the world's largest consumer of coffee.

The world's obsession with coffee shows no signs of slowing. Thanks to coffee,

caffeine is the world's most widely consumed drug. Coffee has grown in more

than seventy countries, although just four Brazil, Vietnam, Columbia, and Indonesia

count for sixty percent of the world's supply, which totals about ten million tons

of beans each year. None of the Arab countries where coffee originated rank among

the most significant producers. This has been another episode of Strange History. If

you liked this episode, please subscribe on Apple, Spotify, iHeartMedia, Spreaker,

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please email Strange History pod at gmail dot com. This podcast was produced by

Dead to Me Productions and the brainchild of Amy Domestico. Thank you Spreaker for

being such a great podcast platform and thanks to the Dark Past Network or allowing

me to be part of your wonderful team podcast. He's Out.

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