Where and when did coffee drinking become popular?
Check out: http://www.koffeekorner.com/koffeehistory.htm for more information. The legend has it that the actual coffee beans were discovered c. 850 in Ethiopia, when goat herders noticed that goats got hyperactive upon eating them. The goat herders tried it themselves, and thus coffee was discovered. Around 1100, Arabs in the area of what is now Yemen began to roast/boil the coffee beans to make a drink. In 1475, the first coffee shop opened in Constantinople (now Istanbul), and two coffee houses opened in 1554. This is the point where coffee drinking became a popular social activity. In the 1600s, Ottoman traders introduced coffee to Europe, and eventually it was smuggled to the West and East Indies (by European traders) to be grown there. So even though we often drink coffee that comes from Brazil or Colombia, it is native to the Middle East, not to South America.
