Many of us enjoy a good cup of coffee. But have you ever wondered when was coffee invented? There is the story about this guy named Kaldi. He lived way back in the 9th-century. In Ethiopia. The story goes, that this guy was a goat herder who discovered coffee when he noticed how excited his goats became after eating the beans from a coffee plant. And…. it did not appear in writing until 1671. Historians have agreed that this account is probably fabricated. From what I have read…. the original domesticated coffee plant is said to have been from Harar in Ethiopia.
Now… I don’t know how they know what they know. But your coffee started in Ethiopia, whether we like the boring version or not.
Of course… there was a time in my life when there was nothing better in the world than having that first cigarette of the morning with that steaming hot cup of coffee. Better than peanut butter and jelly. Better than eggs and bacon.
To light that smoke up… I always used a Gold Zippo lighter. And since we know where coffee came from, we might as well know when was the cigarette lighter was invented. Well, it happened way before the invention of the “actual match.” The first lighter was produced in 1816 by a German chemist named Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner. This thing was a bit of a timebomb, I’ll tell you. It was called “Döbereiner’s lamp.” It was a (highly dangerous) cartridge filled with hydrogen and triggered by a platinum catalyst. Kapow. And you thought cigarettes were dangerous.
Back to it. The only thing better than drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes, all together…. was drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes, and reading a Dr. Seuss Book. Boy I was busy when I was seven. One of my favorites, was The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. And….. in that story, the Grinch laments that he has had to put up with the Whos’ celebration of Christmas for 53 years. Here is a sidebar. Dr. Seuss was 53 when he wrote and published the book.
I am 53. I was joking about being seven, and smoking.
I quit smoking long ago. But, I still drink coffee. And I still read Dr. Seuss.
There’s no match for that.
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“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
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“Follow effective actions with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” – Peter Drucker
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“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” – Albert Einstein
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