Over the hundreds of years of its history, coffee has gained a lot of admirers. Today it is drunk at business meetings and parties, in restaurants and bars. This is a wonderful drink that traditionally accompanies communication, an irreplaceable element of meetings with friends, relatives and colleagues.

There are many legends about coffee. Until now, experts have not come to a consensus about the origin of this word. Some believe that "coffee" was formed from the Arabic "kaue" - strength, energy. Others associate it with the name of the South Ethiopian province - Kaffa, where the wild forest thickets of Arabian coffee are still preserved.

The history of the discovery of coffee, a drink that mankind enjoys, goes back centuries. There are several legends about a person's first acquaintance with coffee. One of them is a very plausible story about a shepherd from Ethiopia named Kalid (according to another version - Kaldi), who lived presumably in the 3rd century AD. He noticed that his goats behave very restlessly and do not sleep at night after eating leaves and red fruits from one bush. Being a curious person, he tasted these fruits himself and felt an extraordinary surge of strength.

According to another legend, for the first time the invigorating effect of coffee was used by monks in Christian monasteries in Ethiopia. They prepared a decoction of coffee fruits to relieve the feeling of fatigue that appeared during long religious ceremonies, and called it "Kava" - in honor of the Persian ruler Kavus Kai, who, according to legend, ascended to heaven on a winged chariot. So it was or not, and which of these stories can be considered true, now no one knows.

Ethiopia is considered the birthplace of coffee, where it still grows as a wild plant. But coffee began its triumphant march around the world in Yemen, where it was taken out by fraudulent means by Arab traders, and quickly gained popularity.

The spread of coffee in the world was accompanied by many curious facts: modern lovers of this drink, for the most part, do not even suspect how funny and sometimes even detective events its history is rich in.

Do you like to drink coffee?