# The word "chocolate" comes from the Classical Nahuatl word "xocoatl," which refers to the bitter, spicy drink of cacao beans made by the Aztecs.
# Joseph Fry invented the first Chocolate Bar in 1847.
# The first chocolate bar in the world was produced by British chocolate manufacturer Cadbury in the year 1842.
# Irish botanist Sir Hans Sloane invented Chocolate Milk in Jamaica in the early 1700s.
# Richard Cadbury, the son of Cadbury founder John Cadbury, created the first heart-shaped box of chocolates for Valentine's Day in 1861.
# Ben & Jerry's made the first Dough Ice Cream Cookie.
# In 1780 the first machine-made chocolate was produced in Barcelona, Spain.
# Wispa Gold Wrapped Bar by British company Cadbury is one of the "Most Expensive Chocolate Bar in the World." This chocolate bar was designed as a marketing strategy for relaunching their caramel chocolate bar brand, Wispa Gold. But in fact, this expensive version is wrapped in an edible gold leaf. It cost around $1,430 per bar.
# Chocolate is also used for constructing sculptures and paintings! In fact, the biggest chocolate sculpture ever made was an Australian Easter egg. It weighed about 2,000 kg (less than 4,500 pounds) and was about 10 feet tall!
# Brussels Airport is the world's biggest chocolate seller, selling over 800 tons of chocolate every year.
# In Germany, you will find the largest cuckoo clock made from chocolate.
# More than two-thirds of the world's cocoa is grown in Africa and 33 percent of the world's production is produced by Côte d'Ivoire alone.
# It takes about a year to grow enough beans for a Cocoa tree to make 10 Hershey bars.
# Each cocoa tree produces around 2,500 beans every year.
# In 2010, 1.8 million children between 5 and 17 years of age were forced laborers on cocoa farms across the Ivory Coast and 40 percent were not enrolled in school and only 5 percent were paid for work. UNICEF projects 35,000 of these children are trafficking victims.
# Cacao trees can survive up to the age of 200 but they only produce viable cacao beans for only 25 years of their lives.
# Chocolate is so important to cacao farmers in Indonesia that they even built a 20-foot statue of a pair of hands holding simply a cacao pod.
# The United States chocolate manufacturers use about 3.5 million pounds of whole milk every day to make milk chocolate.
# Chocolate has developed into such a huge industry that 40 to 50 million people depend on cacao for their livelihood. It generates over 3.8 million tons of cacao beans each year.
# The chocolate industry is worth around $110 billion every year.
# German chocolate cake has no relation to Germany. It takes its name from its founder, Sam German.
# One of the facts about chocolate is that the smell of chocolate increases the waves of theta brain which causes relaxation.
# Chocolate is the only edible substance to melt at about 32°C (90°F), just below the temperature of the human body. For this reason, chocolate melts in your mouth.
# Chocolate offers you a higher level of mental strength and helps your heart pound harder than kissing does.
# White Chocolate is not actually chocolate, because it contains no solids of cocoa or liquor of cocoa. White "chocolate" actually includes butter produced from cocoa.
# It has been proven that only dark chocolate (not other varieties of chocolate) is beneficial to human health. To make dark chocolate beneficial, the first ingredient listed should be cacao or chocolate liquor, not sugar. Dark chocolate contains more cacao beans and less sugar than any other chocolates and is therefore considered safer than milk and white chocolate.
# Darker chocolates now have almost as much caffeine as Coca-Cola does.
# You will get tooth decay if you eat more chocolate! This is what most mothers warn and refuse their children, eating chocolate. That is not true, however. Eating chocolates literally serves as a guard to mouth and prevents tooth decay because chocolates contain antibacterial elements. It is only the candies filled with sugar that cause tooth decay!
# One chocolate chip provides enough food energy for an adult to walk 150 feet. Around 35 chocolate chips are enough for a mile or 875,000 chips would take them around the world.
# People who feel depressed eat about 55 percent more chocolate than their peers who are not depressed.
# Chocolate facts: 1 in 7 aged 15 to 24 says that life without chocolate is not worth living.
# According to the Food and Drug Administration, people who are allergic to chocolate are primarily allergic to cockroaches because about eight parts of insects are usually found in a chocolate bar.
# Chocolate can cause illness to dogs and cats – which means no tastings for your furry friend, and more for you.
# On Valentine's Day, Americans buy more than 58 million pounds of chocolate a year, making for 5 percent of sales for the entire year.
# Women who consume chocolate regularly have a stronger sex life than those who do not, according to Italian studies. Even they had higher levels of desire, arousal, and satisfaction from sex.
# Moreover, climate change could lead to disease spreading between trees and cacao-growing plants. Of course, it might be the end of chocolate as we know it.
# Due to the shortage of cocoa beans, chocolate prices are more likely to increase in a few years.
# Cocoa butter is one of the excellent by-products of cacao. This is popularly used in body creams which moisturizers, and in many cases help to reduce excess marks and scarring.
# M&Ms was founded in 1941 to provide soldiers with a way to consume chocolate without melting it.
# M&M's have been taken to space over 130 times.
# Andes Candies are originally known as 'Andy's Candys.'
# Hershey's Kisses got their name from the kissing sound of the machine which makes the chocolate deposit on the conveyor belt.
# Hershey's makes 70 million kisses every day, and enough to make a 300,000-mile-long Kisses line annually.
# Chocolate became Nestlé's 2nd biggest product in 1929.
# Nestlé, one of the world's biggest food companies, was established by Henri Nestlé at Vevey, Switzerland, in the late 1800s. According to the company website, it did not start as a chocolate company, but instead as an instant milk product.
# Ruth Wakefield, the founder of the chocolate chip cookie, sold her cookie recipe to Nestle in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate.
# One of the interesting facts about chocolate is that cacao has been used for millions of years and is possibly one of nature's oldest foods.
# The first people to cultivate chocolate were the Mokaya and other pre-Olmec peoples who lived around 1000 B.C. in southeast Mexico.
# Cacao beans were the currency of Mayan civilization, so counterfeiting cacao beans made of painted clay had been a thriving industry. Goods could be priced in cacao units: a slave cost 100 beans, a prostitute's services cost 10 beans and a turkey cost 20 beans. While the Spanish conquistadors were hoarding gold, the Mesoamericans were hoarding beans from cacao. The beans were used as a currency in some parts of Latin America, as late as the 19th century.
# Of course, Easter is among the most famous dates on the chocolate calendar. This is where traditionally people exchange chocolate eggs with each other. The egg types are believed to signify Jesus Christ's rebirth.
# A bar is not one of the United Kingdom's most popular chocolate treats. It is orange! Terry's Chocolate Orange is a fruit-shaped sweet that can be divided into segments to eat at a time. Believe it or not, every year Terry's generates about 350 million segments.
# April Fool's Day in France is called "Poisson d'Avril." French translates the word "Poisson" into fish, so children enjoy a piece of fish-shaped chocolate this day while playing pranks on each other.
# Chocolate facts: A 2013 study found that the smell of chocolate in a bookstore made customers 22 percent more likely to purchase some type of book and a staggering 40 percent more likely to buy romance novels or cookbooks.
# Cyclists who consumed chocolate milk after a workout showed less exhaustion in a small study at Indiana University, and scored higher on endurance tests than those who had a sports drink.
# The Microwave was originally inspired by chocolate. Percy Spence, a second world war radar scientist, loved chocolate. He noticed a chocolate bar had melted in his pocket when close to a magnetron. He noticed that magnetrons could be easily used to heat food, and invented the microwave oven.
# Hundreds of Canadian kids went on strike in 1947 and boycotted chocolate after the price of a chocolate bar increased from 5 cents to 8 cents.
# Napoleon always had chocolate with him, as when he needed an energy boost, he ate it.
# Benjamin Franklin sold chocolate in his Philadelphia print shop.
# Three Musketeers bars used to have three bars that were flavored individually: chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. But when prices started to rise for the fruit they decided to drop the strawberry one and eventually turned into one big chocolate bar.
# Alfred Hitchcock used Bosco chocolate syrup as blood in the iconic shower scene in the movie Psycho.
# The ninth emperor of the Aztecs, Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin (Montezuma II), was one of the wealthiest and most powerful person in the world. He was also known as The King of Chocolate. He had a stash of nearly a billion cacao beans at the height of his wealth. Every day, the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II consumed over 50 cups of chocolate.
# Soldiers were sometimes paid in chocolate during the Revolutionary War.
# During the Second World War, Nutella was invented when an Italian pastry manufacturer blended hazelnuts into chocolate to extend his supply of cocoa.
# The original 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie was originally used as a Quaker Oats advertisement. The film was sponsored by the food company to advertise their new Wonka chocolate bar, which is why the film is called Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory as the original movie, instead of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
# A jewel thief repeatedly offered chocolate to the guards employed at the bank in Antwerp, Belgium to gain their trust. By doing that he stole $28 million worth of gems in 2007.
# 14th February is the National Cream Filled Chocolate Day.
# 19th February is National Chocolate Mint Day.
# 8th July is National Milk Chocolate with Almonds Day.
# 28th July is the Official National Milk Chocolate Day.
# 16th December is the National Chocolate Covered Anything Day.
# 28th December is Chocolate Candy Day.
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References :
Candyusa - Facts About Chocolate
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