Black, one sugar

The history of my favorite beverage: coffee.
I drink about four to eight cups a day. I prefer it to soda pop, water, juice and even gin (which is my second favorite). But 1200 years ago coffee was just a plant on a hillside in Ethiopia.
I especially like the idea that Starbucks, for all its ubiquity, was a latecomer on the coffeehouse bandwagon.

• The first coffeehouses were opened in Mecca and were called 'kaveh kanes'. They quickly spread throughout the Arab world and became successful places.
• The first European coffeehouse opened in Venice in 1683, with the most famous, Caffe Florian in Piazza San Marco, opening in 1720. It is still open for business today.
• The largest insurance market in the world, Lloyd's of London, began life as a coffeehouse. It was started in 1688 by Edward Lloyd, who prepared lists of the ships that his customers had insured.
• The Boston Tea Party Of 1773 was planned in a coffee house, the Green Dragon. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Bank of New York started in coffeehouses, in what is today the financial district known as Wall Street.