The powers of a man's mind are directly proportioned to the quantity of coffee he drinks.

- Sir James Mackintosh

• 1.4 billion cups of coffee are drunk around the world every day.
• At the end of the 16th century records show there were at least 500 cafes in Istanbul alone. The first European cafes were opened by immigrants from Asia around 1650.
• World coffee consumption is 4.6kg per year per head ­ the average in the European Union is 5.6kg.
• When it is in bloom, the coffee tree is covered with 30,000 white flowers which begin to develop into fruit after 24-36 hours.
• A coffee tree has a lifespan of about 50 years.
• There are 73 species of coffee tree, but only 2 are cultivated: arabica and canephora. There are 200 varieties of arabica and 50 of canephora, of which only 5 are grown commercially, including robusta.
• The coffee cherries turn from yellow to orange and then bright red when they ripen, 6-8 weeks after flowering.
• There are 900 different flavours of arabica. Complex and very volatile, they deteriorate of exposed to air and light.
• "Cafedomancy" is the science of reading the future in coffee grounds.
• Coffee is the second-most traded commodity in the world economy, after oil.
• Most of the world's coffee is grown by small-scale coffee farming families.
• It takes 42 coffee beans to make an espresso.
• On average, men drink more coffee than women.
• Bach wrote a coffee cantata in 1732.
• Over 25 million people are employed in the coffee industry.
• Coffee grows in more than 50 countries.
• The first European coffee was sold in pharmacies as a medical remedy.
• More than a third of the world's coffee is exported to the USA.
• 1 kilogram of roasted coffee requires 4,000 - 5,000 coffee beans.
• In the 17th century, the first coffee house opened in London known as "penny universities" because a person could buy a cup of coffee for 1 cent and learn more at the coffee house than in class! The London Stock Exchange grew from one of these coffee houses.