Categories: Stories

Today’s fact of life#13

Coke was invented by a pharmacist.

John Pemberton has certainly left behind a legacy. Pemberton was wounded in one of the last Civil War battles, at which point he developed an addiction for morphine while in recovery. His original invention was an alcoholic beverage called “Pemberton’s French Wine Coca” which was a recipe that mixed coca, kola nut, and damiana. It was meant to be an alternative pain-killer to morphine. Wanting to make a more marketable product, Coca-Cola was invented as a way of making a non-alcoholic form of his previously sold wine coca. As Pemberton was testing different concoctions for his new non-alcoholic medicine, he accidentally blended the base syrup with carbonated water. It was at this point when Pemberton decided to sell his final product as a fountain drink instead of a medicine. –thefactsite.com

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Charles Rukuni

The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.

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