There has been more than one coffee related discussion in this group, and some of us are pretty passionate about our Cup Of Joe.
I caught a segment on NPR this morning entitled "War, Peace and Coffee" which relates the role coffee has played in some of the conflicts that the US has been involved in.
The article can be found here along with a link to the 7 minute audio piece. The audio is a lot more detailed than the article.
While combing through Civil War journals looking for stories, one contributor to the article found:
"The word coffee was more present in these diaries than the words 'war,' 'bullet,' 'cannon,' 'slavery,' 'mother' or even 'Lincoln.' You can only ignore what they're talking about for so long before you realize that's the story," Grinspan says.