Why is alcohol a big part of the British culture? ( Archived) (51)

The Guardian news Apr 17, 2015
Sailors were given a daily tot of rum from 1655 until the ration was abolished, as recently as 1970. Originally it was given to sailors neat when the beer ran out (water was not safe to drink as it became rancid very quickly at sea and it was often taken from polluted rivers, such as the Thames).Apr 17, 2015

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Rum has a long tradition with Britain’s Royal Navy, and with navies that grew out of it, including the Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and other commonwealth navies.

The tradition of naval rum began with the Royal Navy’s West Indies squadron in Jamaica in 1655. By 1731, it had spread to the rest of the British fleet.

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Coca-Cola has a proud history of supporting men and women in uniform and in the 1940s the Company was determined –in whatever small way it could –to offer those brave men and women a small reminder of home and happier times.

After sitting on the fence entry of the United States into the war brought an order from The Coca-Cola Company president Robert Woodruff in 1941 “to see that every man in uniform gets a bottle of Coca-Cola for five cents, wherever he is and whatever it costs the Company.”Despite the difficulties, Woodruff knew that Coca-Cola could support the war effort.

Presence of Coca-Cola did more than just lift the morale of the troops. In many areas, it gave local people their first taste of Coca-Cola—a taste they obviously enjoyed.

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How Coca-Cola Provided A Fresh Coke to the Front Lines of World War II

Coca-Cola used to contain cocaine

After being wounded in the Civil War, former Confederate Colonel John Pemberton developed an addiction to morphine. He set out in search of an opium-free substitute, and the end result, which he developed at his drugstore in Columbus, Georgia, served as the prototype for Coca-Cola’s recipe; he called it a “brain tonic and intellectual beverage.”
2. It was derived from two key ingredients

The name Coca-Cola is derived from two primary ingredients: the coca leaf and the kola nut. Extract of the coca leaf was essentially cocaine, and the kola nut provided caffeine.
3. It was originally alcoholic

It originally contained 9 milligrams of cocaine per glass

5. It still contains coca leaf extract

In 1988, the New York Times discovered that Coca-Cola still contained non-narcotic coca leaf extract produced by the Stepan Company, the nation’s only legal commercial importer of coca leaves. ''Ingredients from the coca leaf are used, but there is no cocaine in it and it is all tightly overseen by regulatory authorities,'' a Coca-Cola spokesperson confirmed to the paper. No word on whether it still contains kola nuts, but we wouldn’t be too surprised!

No, no, Croatian