Banning coffee

Societies have tried it before, writes Luke Fentress:

Perhaps the strangest attempt to ban coffee came in Berlin in 1777. Fredrick the Great had no taste for the drink of merchants and worried what its effect might be on the army. “The King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be depended on to endure hardship or beat his enemies.” He’d rather the troops drank the more manly, Germanic alternative: beer, which had clearly won more wars than any espresso had.