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C
W e all know how it begun—or might have begun: some shepherd in
Ethiopia noticed that his goats started acting funny after eating some
unknown cherries and the story goes on. But it wasn’t until the 1400s
that people figured out they could roast its seeds. People started
falling in love with the drink, causing troubles and being banned in some countries,
while in others making women rebel against it by publishing The Women’s Petition
Against Coffee, in which wives argued that their husbands were forever absent from
the home and family, neglecting their domestic duties—‘turning Turk’, and all for ‘a
little base, black, thick, nasty, bitter, stinking nauseous puddle water’. Nevertheless,
the drink even got a seal of approval from Pope Clement VIII and is now loved by the
world, not causing any troubles any more.
Today coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world, behind only
petroleum, and has become a mainstay of the modern diet. With the growing number
of coffee shops and coffee delivery services it is hard to imagine anyone to be against
the so-called ‘black bitter water’.
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