In the 18th century Britons’ sugar intake more than quadrupled, from about 4 lb a year per person in 1700 to about 18 lb in 1800.
Sweet tea, sugared by the colonies, became a working-class habit.
More amazing facts
- 1696 · 1699 The man who wrote the laws of motion also worked as a detective.
- 1698 · 1772 Beards in Russia stayed taxable for 74 years.
- 1698 · 1705 Under Peter the Great bearded men carried a token stamped “Money received”, proof of paying the beard tax. Top merchants paid 100 rubles a year; peasants paid a kopeck each time they entered a town.
- 1699 · 1700 Russia's shortest year lasted four months.
- 1701 No one sits on the Ashanti kingdom's sacred throne.
- 1703 · 1739 · 1833 Peter the Great never spoke of cutting a 'window to Europe'. The phrase is Pushkin's, from The Bronze Horseman (1833), and as he noted himself, the image came from the Italian writer Francesco Algarotti.