During the American Civil War, soldiers, having used up all their coffee supplies, used roasted sweet potato and Indian corn as a substitute.

The only US state in which coffee is grown commercially is Hawaii.

After petroleum coffee is the second-most-traded physical commodity in the world.

The first coffeehouses in historical Constantinople were called qahveh khaneh (schools of wisdom) since they were the gathering places of men of arts and literature.

To commit suicide with the help of coffee one should have a 100 cups of it in a row.

Roasting coffee in batches is quite a recent thing. Before the1870’s most coffee was roasted at home in a frying pan over a charcoal fire.

On the contrary to popular belief, coffee does not grow in plain brown beans. It actually grows in red berries, which normally carry two green beans each. Sometimes there’s only one bean in the berry – this single bean is called a peaberry. The anomaly of coffee berries carrying three beans are considered to bring good luck.

On a diet? Have black coffee, without milk or sugar it has almost no calories (less than 1 Kcal).

Cowboys are said to have had one of the most peculiar ways of making coffee – they put ground coffee in a clean sock and put in a pot of cold water over a campfire. When ready, they would enjoy this coffee in tin cups.

Nowadays the second largest coffee consumer is Japan. The Japanese are even known for bathing in coffee grounds fermented with pineapple pulp to improve their skin and reduce wrinkles. Amazing! Beats mud-bathing anytime.

1 kilogram of roasted coffee contains 4,000 - 5,000 coffee beans.

Being a meticulous coffee lover, Beethoven always counted 60 beans for each cup of coffee he prepared.

To prepare a really tasty espresso one needs 42 coffee beans.

Caffeine burns off during the coffee roasting process, so the darker the roast the less caffeine it contains.

There isn’t a coffee drinker in the world who wouldn’t know that the author of Père Goriot, the famous nineteenth-century French writer Honoré de Balzac had as much as 40 cups of coffee a day?

In December 2001 Brazil came up with a clever idea to promote its coffee – they produced a scented stamp which should smell like coffee during the next 3 to 5 years.

Up until the tenth century, coffee was used as food. On their nomadic journeys Ethiopian tribesmen were known to eat little balls of coffee berries mixed with animal fat.

In 18th century Germany coffee was believed to cause sterility in women. To increase their fertility women were advised to drink beer…

According to a research, a cup of coffee may contain up to 20 per cent of the advised amount of calories per day. The BBC writes that some of the coffees tested contained up to 400 calories caused by the rich milk, cream and chocolate added to it.

Today, instead of a playlist, we offer you a whole album: Mika - “Life In Cartoon Motion”. Usually there are only some songs on an album, that are good morning starters. This time, believe it or not, the whole album is so positive that it is a must on the grayest mornings.

Probably there’s no need for a long story, because you may already know the singles “Grace Kelly” or “Love Today”.

The very same tea doesn’t always taste the same - sometimes it tastes better than other times. Making a good tea isn’t so easy as it looks like, there are some rules to follow to get it right.

Use loose leaf tea. The quality of loose tea is usually better than teabag ones and it doesn’t taste like paper.

Store your tea in a sealed container. This guarantees that the tea won’t lose its flavor.

The bigger the tea infuser, the better, more space allows tea leaves to diffuse and steep properly. You’ll get the best results by putting loose tea directly into tea pot.

For black, green, white and oolong teas take about one teaspoon of tea per 200 ml (7 oz) water, even though it may vary according to tea and taste.

Before pouring the water, warm up the pot or mug so the tea wouldn’t cool down immediately. Hot water will do the trick just fine.

Quality of water is also important – bad water will ruin the taste. If you want, you may try using spring water. According to some sources, minerals in it will bring up the taste.

Next key component is right temperature of water. For black tea it should be at boiling point (100 °C or 212 °F). Don’t let it boil for a long time, it will remove the oxygen but the oxygen is what brings up the taste. (Note that under 90 °C (194 °F) black tea wouldn’t also brew properly.)

Green, white and oolong teas should be brewed on temperature around 80 °C to 85 °C (176 °F to 185 °F). Higher temperature will burn the leaves and produce a bitter taste.

Time of steeping varies from tea to tea, but all types of teas should be brewed at least 30 seconds. Steep black and oolong teas for about 3 to 4 minutes; green and white teas about 2 to 3 minutes. Longer time usually makes the tea bitter.

If you don’t have time to go through all these steps, you may try just some of them and still get a better tea.

“Dancing With Tears In My Eyes” by Ultravox [mp3]
“Jerusalem” by Alphaville [mp3]
“Souds Like A Melody” Alphaville [mp3]
“Save a Prayer” by Duran Duran [mp3]
“Planet Earth” by Duran Duran [mp3]
“Train of Thought” by A-Ha [mp3]
“Take On Me” by A-Ha [mp3]
“Big In Japan” by Alphaville [mp3]
“A Victory Of Love” by Alphaville [mp3]
“The Sun Always Shines on TV” by A-Ha [mp3]

For more detailed info see the WakeUpVibes page.

Morning! Penguins here. Today we’ve got a great story for you how we… Stop, lets start from the beginning.

Couple of days ago we decided to go for a little walk. Just for fun, you know. Actually, we were going to search for the blue snow but that’s not important at the moment. So we were wandering around and suddenly instead of blue snow we found an abandoned camp of polar researchers. That wasn’t quite what we were looking for, but somehow it was even better. You see, polar researchers often have all kinds of cool stuff like shiny things and all sorts of hairy things and even machines that go bing! So we were checking what they had this time and found… coffee. That’s right, a real pack of coffee. Finally.

Next morning we gathered all together to try and taste the coffee. Everybody was so excited about it. After all, that was the very first coffee that we had ever got and so on. We stood around the coffee and smelled it. Smell was… lets say, it was nothing like fish. One of us asked if it had gone bad? We sniffed again but it didn’t smell like dead fish either. No fish at all.

We stood there for a couple of hours but no one was brave enough. Finally our leader took the first beakful. Others watched carefully how his eyes went wide open. “Wakes pretty fast,” we nodded. Leader nodded back and started to jump. “Gives a lot of energy,” everybody gladly thought. But then his face turned blue and he coughed for quite some time. We thought that it was some sort of side effect and decided to try coffee by ourselves but then realized what had happened. The coffee was terrible. So bitter and dry. Almost impossible to swallow. We coughed and coughed and ate a lot of snow before we could speak again.

After recovery we dug a deep hole and buried coffee there. So much about penguins and coffee… In conclusion, today’s penguin-wisdom: don’t try to eat coffee if you’re a penguin. Probably shouldn’t eat it even you’re not a penguin. Crazy stuff.

Goo Goo Dolls: The band was founded under the name “Sex Maggots” but a club owner who booked the band requested they change the name, because the local newspapers wouldn’t print that name. So, they picked a name out of a magazine ad for a doll that cried Goo Goo when you turned it upside down.

Jethro Tull: Named after an English agriculturist who invented the seed drill.

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Named after Leonard Skinner, who was an annoying gym teacher/coach some of the band members had in Robert E. Lee High School in Jacksonville, Florida.

Mothers Of Invention: Frank Zappa’s band started out as “The Soul Giants” and was later changed to “The Mothers” but their record label asked them to change it because it could be taken as an obscenity. So, out of necessity they added “of Invention” as “necessity is the mother of invention.”

Beastie Boys: “Beastie” is said to have originally stood as an acronym for “Boys Entering Anarchistic States Toward Internal Excellence”. However, according to Mike D and MCA on the Charlie Rose Show, August 28, 2007, this was an afterthought once the band was already named “Beastie Boys”.

The Doors: The band took their name from Aldous Huxley’s book “The Doors of Perception” which in turn was inspired by a line from William Blake’s poem: “If the doors of perception were to be cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite”.

Heaven 17: The name is taken from a fictional band mentioned in Anthony Burgess’s book “A Clockwork Orange”.

UB40: Took their name from a paper form “Unemployment Benefit, Form 40″ issued by the UK government’s Department of Health and Social Security which is now replaced by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), and the form UB40 no longer exists.

Weezer: There’s a widespread belief that Rivers Cuomo was nicknamed Weezer in school because he made weezing sounds caused by his asthma. Actually he never had asthma. However, Weezer has been claimed to be a nickname of Rivers’. Actually, there doesn’t seem to be exact explanation what the name really means. Anyway, the band needed a name and Rivers came up with one. (According to the fansite Weezer101).

Led Zeppelin: After a concert Keith Moon, the drummer of The Who, said to Jimmy Page that his new band will fly like a lead zeppelin, in other words it will not survive. The “a” from “lead” was dropped so people woudn’t pronounce it as leed.

It’s an open source project with Creative Commons license. The source files, hex files, EAGLE cad files and documents are all available on this site.

Bruces’ Philosophers’ Song [mp3]
Galaxy Song [mp3]
Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life [mp3]
Lumberjack Song [mp3]
Every Sperm Is Sacred [mp3]
Money Song [mp3]

You’ll find the details (and maybe the Holy Grail) on the WakeUpVibes page.

The syrups that are made with fruit or cane sugars are sweeter than those made with beet or corn sugar. But then again, there are also sugar free syrups available. Either way, use syrups which are marked with “all-natural” statement. Avoid the ones with artificial sweeteners.

When it comes to flavor, higher quality syrups tend to add more flavoring with lesser syrup, so you will get more drinks per bottle than with lower quality syrups. In the end of course the concentration of flavor is pretty much the matter of opinion. There is one thing though - don’t overdo it with syrups, it’s not going to be very nice then.