From the Beginning

7th Century AD - wild chocolate trees in the Yucatan region of Central America
600 AD - in Yucatan, the Mayans established the earliest cocoa plantations
1400's and 1500's - Spanish saw potential commercial applications of a strange, bitter fruit (chocolate)
1492 - King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella first saw dark brown beans
1519 - Emperor Montezuma drank 50 or more portions of chocolate daily
1528 - Hernando Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico took cacao beans to Spain
1606 - cacao beans introduced to Italy
1657 - first famous English chocolate house - Great Britain
1707 - cocoa had become a fashionable beverage in London
1730 - chocolate dropped in price and was available to people of all economic levels
1765 - chocolate introduced to United States (as a remedy for illness) also the date of the first chocolate factory
1810 - Spain was consuming one-third of the cocoa being produced in the world – Also Venezuela was producing half of the world’s requirements for cocoa
1828 - cocoa press invented and patented (to squeeze out the cocoa butter from chocolate liquor, leaving powdered cocoa) by Coenraad Johannes Van Houten, a Dutch chocolate master
1830 - Court of Emperor Franz Joseph - "The Imperial Torte" (a square chocolate cake with five thin layers)
1847 - first chocolate bar, Bristol, England
1875 - Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams making a declaration about chocolate’s superiority over tea or coffee for both health and nourishment
1879 - milk chocolate invented by the Swiss (Daniel Peter)
1900 - Queen Victoria sent her New Year’s greeting to the British troops during the Boer War in the form of a specialty molded chocolate bar

Chocolate

One of life's little pleasures!