Tag: 18th century

Between 1756 and 1823, coffee was prohibited on no less than five separate occasions in Sweden. The seemingly bizarre decision to outlaw the beloved beverage stemmed from a complex mixture of economic policy, questionable health beliefs, and royal paranoia, which all contributed to the various times coffee was banned in Sweden.

Over 673 million people experienced hunger in 2024, yet folklore often points to a single 18th-century figure when asking, who is the most hungry person in the world. This individual, a man known as Tarrare, suffered from an extreme, insatiable appetite that remains a medical mystery to this day.