Coffee

• A scientific report form the University of California found that the steam rising from a cup of coffee contains the same amounts of antioxidants as three oranges. The antioxidants are heterocyclic compounds which prevents cancer and heart disease.
  
  
• After they are roasted, and when the coffee beans begin to cool, they release about 700 chemical substances that make up the vaporizing aromas.
  
  
• An arabica coffee tree can produce up to 12 pounds of coffee a year, depending on soil and climate.
  


• Beethoven who was a coffee lover, was so particular about his coffee that he always counted 60 beans each cup when he prepared his brew.
  


• Coffee is generally roasted between 400F and 425F. The longer it is roasted, the darker the roast. Roasting time is usually from ten to twenty minutes.
  
  
• Coffee is grown commercially in over forty-five countries throughout the world.
  


• Coffee is the most popular beverage worldwide with over 400 billion cups consumed each year.
  
  
• Coffee trees are evergreen and grow to heights above 15 feet but are normally pruned to around 8 feet in order to facilitate harvesting.
  


• Coffee trees produce highly aromatic, short-lived flowers producing a scent between jasmine and orange. These blossoms produce cranberry-sized coffee cherries. It takes four to five years to yield a commercial harvest.
  


• Coffee, as a world commodity, is second only to oil.
  


• Dark roasted coffees actually have LESS caffeine than medium roasts. The longer a coffee is roasted, the more caffeine burns off during the process.
  


• Flavored coffees are created after the roasting process by applying flavored oils specially created to use on coffee beans.
  


• In the last three centuries, 90% of all people living in the Western world have switched from tea to coffee.
  


• Italians do not drink espresso during meals. It is considered to be a separate event and is given its own time.
  


• Jamaica Blue Mountain is often regarded as the best coffee in the world.
  
  
• Large doses of coffee can be lethal. Ten grams, or 100 cups over 4 hours, can kill the average human.
  


• October 1st is the official Coffee Day in Japan.
  


• Only about 20% of harvested coffee beans are considered to be a premium bean of the highest quality.
  


• The Arabica is the original coffee plant. It still grows wild in Ethiopia. The arabica coffee tree is an evergreen and in the wild will grow to a height between 14 and 20 feet.
  


• The aroma and flavor derived from coffee is a result of the little beads of the oily substance called coffee essence, coffeol, or coffee oil. This is not an actual oil since it dissolves in water.
  


• The average cup of coffee contains more than 1000 different chemical components, none of which is tasted in isolation but only as part of the overall flavor.
  


• The coffee tree produces its first full crop when it is about 5 years old. Thereafter it produces consistently for 15 or 20 years.
  
  
• The most widely accepted legend associated to the discovery of coffee is of the goatherder named Kaldi of Ethiopia. Around the year 800-850 A.D., Kaldi was amazed as he noticed his goats behaving in a frisky manner after eating the leaves and berries of a coffee shrub. And, of course, he had to try them!
  
  

Chocolate

• 1.5 oz. milk chocolate bar has only 220 calories.
  


• A recent study indicates when men crave food, they tend to crave fat and salt. When women crave food, they tend to desire chocolate.
  


• Americans consumed over 3.1 billion pounds of chocolate in 2001, which is almost half of the total world's production.
  


• Chocolate contains phenylethylamine (PEA), a natural substance that is reputed to stimulate the same reaction in the body as falling in love.
  


• Chocolate manufacturers currently use 40 percent of the world's almonds and 20 percent of the world's peanuts.
  


• Cocoa butter is the natural fat of the cocoa bean. It has a delicate chocolate aroma, but is very bitter tasting. It is used to give body, smoothness, and flavor to eating chocolate.
  


• One plain milk chocolate candy bar has more protein than a banana.
  


• Pet parrots can eat virtually any common "people-food" except for chocolate and avocados. Both of these are highly toxic to the parrot and can be fatal.
  


• The average person will consume 10,000 chocolate bars in a lifetime.
  


• The botanical name of the chocolate plant is Theobramba cacao, which means "Food of the Gods."
  


• A chocolate bar is poisonous to dogs and can even be lethal.

Art and Architecture

• Ancient Chinese artists would never paint pictures of women’s feet.
  


• Leonardo DaVinci began painting the Mona Lisa in 1503. He was still working on the painting when he emigrated to France in 1516 and is believed to have finished it three years later, just before he died. The painting has remained in France ever since and is owned by the state. It once hung in Napoleon's bedroom.
  


• Pablo Picasso's career lasted seventy-eight years, from 1895 until his death in 1973.
  


• The Eiffel Tower is 984 feet high. It receives a fresh coat of 300 tons of reddish-green paint every seven years.
  


• The estimated weight of the Great Pyramid of Egypt is 6,648,000 tons.
  


• The extended right arm of the Statue of Liberty is 42 feet long.
  


• The Hoover Dam was built to last 2,000 years. The concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another 500 years.
  


• The largest movie theater in the world, Radio City Music Hall in New York City, opened in December, 1932. It originally had 5,945 seats.
  


• The largest stained-glass window in the world is at Kennedy International Airport in New York City. It can be seen on the American Airlines terminal building and measures 300 feet long by 23 feet high.
  


• The world's largest art gallery is the Winter Palace and Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. Visitors would have to walk 15 miles to see the 322 galleries which house nearly 3 million works of art.
  


• X-ray technology has shown there are 3 different versions of the Mona Lisa under the visible one.

Fish

• A father sea catfish keeps the eggs of his young in his mouth until they are ready to hatch. He will not eat until his young are born, which may take several weeks.
  


• An electric eel can produce a shock of up to 650 volts.
  


• Catfish have 100,000 taste buds.
  


• Dolphins sleep at night just below the surface of the water. They frequently rise to the surface for air.
  


• Goldfish lose their color if they are kept in dim light or are placed in a body of running water, such as a stream.
  


• It takes a lobster approximately seven years to grow to be one pound.
  


• Sharks apparently are the only animals that never get sick. As far as is known, they are immune to every known disease including cancer.
  


• The blue whale is the loudest animal on Earth. The call of the blue whale reaches levels up to 188 decibels. This extraordinarily loud whistle can be heard for hundreds of miles underwater.
  


• The giant squid is the largest creature without a backbone. It weighs up to 2.5 tons and grows up to 55 feet long. Each eye is a foot or more in diameter.
  


• The harmless Whale Shark, holds the title of largest fish, with the record being a 59 footer captured in Thailand in 1919.
  


• The largest animal ever seen alive was a 113.5 foot, 170-ton female blue whale.
  


• The largest Great White Shark ever caught measured 37 feet and weighed 24,000 pounds. It was found in a herring weir in New Brunswick in 1930.
  


• The Pacific Giant Octopus, the largest octopus in the world, grows from the size of pea to a 150 pound behemoth potentially 30 feet across in only two years, its entire life-span.
  


• The turbot fish lays approximately 14 million eggs during its lifetime.
  


• The world's largest mammal, the blue whale, weighs 50 tons at birth. Fully grown, it weighs as much as 150 tons.
  


• Unlike most fish, electric eels cannot get enough oxygen from water. Approximately every five minutes, they must surface to breathe, or they will drown. Unlike most fish, they can swim both backwards and forwards.
  


• Whales and dolphins can literally fall half asleep. Their brain hemispheres alternate sleeping, so the animals can continue to surface and breathe.
  
  
  

Bugs & Insects

• A cockroach can live for up to a week without a head.
  


• A typical bed usually houses over 6 billion dust mites.
  


• An adult bedbug can survive up to one year without feeding.
  


• Ants are social insects and live in colonies which may have as many as 500,000 individuals.
  


• Ants don't sleep.
  


• Australian termites have been known to build mounds twenty feet high and at least 100 feet wide.
  


• Dragonflies are one of the fastest insects, flying 50 to 60 mph.
  


• Each year, insects eat 1/3 of the Earth's food crop.
  


• In its entire lifetime, the average worker bee produces 1/12th teaspoon of honey.
  


• No two spider webs are the same.
  


• Only female mosquitoes bite. Females need the protein from blood to produce their eggs.
  


• The insect responsible for the most human deaths world-wide is the mosquito.
  


• The buzz that you hear when a bee approaches is the sound of its four wings moving at 11,400 strokes per minute. Bees fly an average of 15 miles per hour.
  


• The honeybee kills more people world-wide than all the poisonous snakes combined.
  The world's smallest winged insect, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the eye of a housefly.
  


• There are more insects in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings on the entire earth.
  


• There are more than 2,500 varieties of mosquito.
  


• There are more than 900,000 known species of insects in the world.
  


• When ants find food, they lay down a chemical trail, called a pheromone, so that other ants can find their way from the nest to the food source.
  


• Worker ants may live seven years and the queen may live as long as 15 years.
  


• You're more likely to be a target for mosquitoes if you consume bananas.
  

Birds

• A bird requires more food in proportion to its size than a baby or a cat.
  


• A woodpecker can peck twenty times a second.
  


• An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
  


• By feeding hens certain dyes they can be made to lay eggs with varicolored yolks.
  


• Hummingbirds are the smallest birds - so tiny that one of their enemies is an insect, the praying mantis.
  


• It takes forty minutes to hard boil an ostrich egg.
  


• Lovebirds are small parakeets who live in pairs. Male and female lovebirds look alike, but most other male birds have brighter colors than the females.
  


• Mockingbirds can imitate any sound from a squeaking door to a cat meowing.
  


• Owls have eyeballs that are tubular in shape, because of this, they cannot move their eyes.
  


• Pet parrots can eat virtually any common "people-food" except for chocolate and avocados. Both of these are highly toxic to the parrot and can be fatal.
  


• The bones of a pigeon weigh less than its feathers.
  


• The fastest bird is the Spine-tailed swift, clocked at speeds of up to 220 miles per hour.
  


• The hummingbird is the only bird that can hover and fly straight up, down, or backward
  


• The male penguin incubates the single egg laid by his mate. During the two month period he does not eat, and will lose up to 40% of his body weight.
  


• The turkey was named for what was wrongly thought to be its country of origin.
  
  

Animals

• A 1,200-pound horse eats about seven times it's own weight each year.
  


• A chameleon can move its eyes in two directions at the same time.
  


• A chimpanzee can learn to recognize itself in a mirror, but monkeys can't.
  


• A cow gives nearly 200,000 glasses of milk in her lifetime.
  


• A newborn kangaroo is about 1 inch in length.
  


• A zebra is white with black stripes.
  


• An adult lion's roar can be heard up to five miles away, and warns off intruders or reunites scattered members of the pride.
  


• Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from blowing sand.
  


• Elephants can communicate using sounds that are below the human hearing range: between 14 and 35 hertz.
  


• German Shepherds bite humans more than any other breed of dog.
  


• Howler monkeys are the noisiest land animals. Their calls can be heard over 2 miles away.
  


• Large kangaroos cover more than 30 feet with each jump.
  


• Moles are able to tunnel through 300 feet of earth in a day.
  


• The penalty for killing a cat, 4,000 years ago in Egypt, was death.
  


• Tigers have striped skin, not just striped fur.
  


• Worldwide, goats provide people with more meat and milk than any other domestic animal.