Humans have always had a close relationship with alcohol, and the United States even has a holiday commemorating the repeal of Prohibition. Alcohol shaped our history, our culture, and our biology—sometimes in pretty surprising ways.

10We Evolved To Drink

In our bodies today, an enzyme called ADH4 processes whatever alcohol we consume. Other primates have the enzyme, but it acts differently in many of them—and many of them can’t process alcohol like we can.

Chemist Steven Benner, recreating enzymes present in our earliest ancestors, noted different types of ADH4 along our evolutionary tree. He traced our version back to a split in the tree 10 million years ago, when the gorilla and the ancestors of the chimpanzee branched off from other primates like lemurs and the orangutan. One branch—that we’re still on—developed the ability to process alcohol. Our group of primates spent more time on the ground eating fallen fruit that had begun to ferment, as opposed to picking fruit fresh from where it grew.

Though there’s still no concrete fossil evidence from our last common ancestor with the gorilla, we know one thing about them: They had the first awesome holiday parties.

9The Face Of World Politics

Every politician makes promises. It’s in their job description. But in the good old days, they offered something more concrete: Candidates handed out alcohol in return for votes.

The practice dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, and it’s been recorded throughout Europe’s history as well. It then stayed around longer than you might think. George Washington’s first attempt at running for office (in the Virginia House of Burgesses) was a failure; on his next attempt, he won, after giving out about half a gallon of alcohol for each vote. A century later, the Republican Party elevated the idea, treating 50,000 of Brooklyn’s citizens to an alcohol-laden picnic.

Some attempts failed, however, leading to important life lessons for 19th-century politicians. Stephen Douglas learned the hard way that if you’re expecting 20,000–30,000 people to show up for your party, make sure you have enough booze to go around. After the food and alcohol ran low at his New York bash, the whole thing turned into a massive pushing and shoving match. Voters went away still hungry and thirsty, and when they went to the polls, they voted instead for some man named Abraham Lincoln.

8The Booming Cork Business

Besides brewing and distilling, the alcohol industry is responsible for another business worth $2 billion—cork production.

High-quality cork is needed to preserve the taste and quality of wine. Cork bark needs to be a certain thickness to be effective, but global warming is changing the trees responsible for the material. Cork is now thinner and of lower quality because trees lack vital proteins.

Wine enthusiasts are up in arms about the need for better-quality corks. They’re starting to look toward metal screw caps or rubber stoppers instead, leaving the fate of the cork industry up in the air.

7American Rum And The Revolution

Schools teach us that the colonists living in America rebelled because of unfair taxation, which is a pretty accurate statement. They also teach that a tax on tea fired the colonists up, culminating in 1773’s Boston Tea Party. In reality, it didn’t all start there. First came a tax on molasses—molasses used for making rum.

Rum was a hugely popular drink in the American colonies, with hundreds of distilleries all manufacturing their syrupy version of the Caribbean drink. As North America’s climate was ill-suited for growing sugar, most of it was imported, to the tune of about six million gallons of molasses in 1770.

Molasses and sugar came from British- and French-ruled areas. To secure trade for themselves, the British used the Molasses Act of 1733 to slap a heavy tax on molasses that didn’t come from their own colonies. A revised act in 1764 imposed the tax on both sugar and molasses, allowing for the seizure of any cargo imported in violation of the law.

Suddenly, tax was having a very real impact on the success of a major colonial business, leading to the beginning of the rebellion against the idea of taxation without representation.

6Pasteurization And Alcohol

When Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization, he wasn’t trying to make safer milk. He was trying to solve the problems of local wineries, distilleries, and breweries.

Pasteur was a chemistry professor and the Dean of the Faculte de Sciencies in France. His work in bacteria and fermentation started when a local man approached him about problems with his beet sugar distillery. Sometimes, his product came out fine. Other times, it produced sour lactic acid.

Examining the processes, Pasteur determined the product was being contaminated by germs in the air. For the first time, he proved that a living thing—bacteria—caused the reaction. He responded by introducing processes for heating, boiling, and creating pure yeast cultures. This not only revolutionized wine and beer but made many other foods safer to eat.

5Christianity And Alcohol

The New Testament is pretty explicit about approving of alcohol. Jesus and the Apostles all drank wine, and according to St. Paul, wine is a gift from God. Paul also said that wine should be enjoyed but not abused, and abstinence is better than alcoholism.

While it seems like that should end all disputes on the matter, some Christians argue that the wine of the New Testament is actually non-alcoholic grape juice. They argue this even though the same Hebrew words describe Christ’s wine and the wine that got Noah drunk and naked.

One of the first things the Puritans did in the New World was build some breweries, but some Baptist and Methodist groups call drinking and alcohol evil. Abstaining from alcohol is a big consideration in the Mormon belief system. Other groups, like the Evangelicals, have recently begun lifting bans on the consumption of alcohol in some of their schools—by instructors, anyway.

4The Ancient Drinking Age Debate

In ancient Egypt, from around 4000 B.C., writings reminded mothers to include a healthy serving of beer when sending children off to school. The idea that we needed to keep alcohol from younger generation started later, with Plato.

In his Laws, written about 360 B.C., Plato described a soul having tasted alcohol as being made of fire and iron. Anyone younger than 18 wasn’t ready for the responsibility that needed to go along with enjoying this most godly of pleasures. He also outlined guidelines for how much you should drink. Once you were 18, you could certainly drink, but it was also important that you didn’t drink too much. By the time you were 40, however, you were free to honor Dionysus above all other gods. Alcohol would help you forget sorrow, renew youth, and soften the hard edges that came with age.

Plato also went a step further in his Republic, saying that young men needed to be coached on how to drink properly. They should be trained at formal dinners about how to behave while drinking and what their limits were.

3The Tavern Guided America’s Political Landscape

When taverns were first built in American colonial cities, people from all walks of life went there to drink and compare notes. As America grew and the class division became more evident, divisions in tavern culture followed suit. In taverns such as Boston’s Green Dragon, plans were hatched to form this entirely new nation. By this time, taverns were a male-dominated world, so a lot of decisions happened without a female voice.

Taverns were also divided ethnically. There were Irish pubs, there were German taverns, and other drinking establishments catered to other particular immigrant groups. That meant taverns and pubs were highly visible targets when someone wanted to make a statement against a particular group. In the 1850s, cities closed taverns on Sundays, effectively eliminating the only public meeting house that the immigrant community had on their one day off. Law enforcement would often use taverns to send messages, shutting down establishments frequented by one group or another.

2The Start Of The Gay Rights Movement

Taverns and bars are meeting places even today. In the late 1960s, though, the drinking culture of America looked pretty different. In New York State, places that served a gay clientele were often denied permits to sell alcohol. Most of these taverns and bars kept operating, though, many striking deals with law enforcement to keep their doors open.

On June 27, 1969, police raided one such tavern, the Stonewall Inn. They arrested 13 people. Over the course of the next six days, protesters took to the streets. Other gay clubs had already been closed, and the attack on the Stonewall was the last straw. Stonewall was more than just a bar: It was a place where young people with no family (usually kicked out by parents in denial over having a gay child) could go to be accepted. The attack on the Stonewall was viewed as an attack on the community.

In time, riot squads were dispatched to deal with the crowds, which numbered in the thousands. On the heels of the Stonewall Inn’s arrests came the formation of the LGBT rights groups, as well as the first gay pride parade—held a year after the bar’s clientele faced off with police.

1No Alcohol? No Utopia.

In 1732, the American colonies contained English land to the north, Spanish-held Florida, and a gap between their borders. Wanting to develop something of a buffer between the two, King George agreed to a rather forward-thinking plan put forward by General James Ogelthorpe.

Oglethorpe asked the king to release many poor English citizens languishing in debtors’ prison. He would take them to the New World, giving them a chance at a new life in his Province of Georgia. Along the way, Oglethorpe was determined to avoid the mistakes he saw the colonies making. In his utopian paradise, there would be no handful of wealthy landowners. Instead, the land would be divided equally among the settlers (50 acres each), and selling it was forbidden. Slavery was forbidden, too. He wanted a state where everyone was equal.

He also banned alcohol. Many in debtors’ prison had gotten there because of alcohol.

The buffer zone succeeded in keeping the Spanish from expanding northward, but that was its only success. The 2,800 people who settled in the area imported slaves from farms to the North. They ignored—or ranted about—the land they had been given. They grew angry that the promises of a flourishing silk industry failed. And they really, really didn’t like the idea of the alcohol ban. Settlers drank openly, and Oglethorpe soon found that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

His grand plan for a utopian society of self-sustaining equality collapsed on itself, and England revoked their relative independence in 1752. We like to think that everyone had a drink when they found out.

As a society, we sure do like a tipple. Government figures estimate nearly 87 percent of Americans will drink alcohol at some point in their lifetime, with 70 percent enjoying at least one drink a year. In England, around 69 percent of men drink at least once a week. It’s easy to see why. A couple of beers make you more relaxed, more sociable, and better-looking to the opposite sex. What’s not to love?

Well, it’s not quite so simple as that. While we all know the dangers of alcoholism, it turns out alcohol may be far more harmful than most of us realize, maybe even more so than any illegal drug. We’d never go so far as to argue for prohibition, but once you look at the data, getting horrendously drunk starts to look less like an amusing diversion, and more like a portal to your nightmares.

10 It’s The Single Most Important Factor In Ruining Life Happiness

If you’ve never heard of the Grant Study, you should know it’s one of the longest-running sociological studies in the world. Starting in 1938, researchers at Harvard tracked the lives of 200 men and reported on their emotional and physical well-being. Over the years, findings have included that intelligence (above a certain level) has no influence on earnings and that older liberals tend to have way more sex. They’ve also revealed that one thing above all else can destroy your happiness utterly: alcohol.

In the 2012 update to the study, Triumphs of Experience, study director George Vaillant revealed that alcohol was one of the key factors in participants’ life outcomes. More so than intelligence, more so than political leanings or how rich their parents were, alcohol was the top decider in how subjects’ lives turned out. No matter where they stood on the social spectrum, those who developed drinking problems took mostly the same path: downward. Alcoholism was the main cause of divorce in the study, one of the main triggers for neurosis and depression (importantly, the alcohol abuse tended to come before the mental problems), and tied with smoking as the single biggest contributor to an early grave. Vaillant called it “a disorder of great destructive power.”

Of course, a similar effect would probably be seen if the men had become drug junkies. But there’s no denying alcohol has other startling effects that reach beyond the murky shadows of addiction.

9 It’s One Of Our Biggest Killers

Between 2006 and 2010, 88,000 Americans died annually from alcohol abuse. That’s not a typo. Every year, the nation’s favorite drug killed more people than Mexico’s brutal drug war. According to the CDC, that makes alcohol the third leading lifestyle-related cause of death for people living in the USA. In Britain, the figures may be even worse. According to respected scientist David Nutt, alcohol is the leading cause of death for Brits aged 16–60.

The reasons for this make for some grim reading. Although by far the highest number of alcohol-related deaths come from liver disease and addiction, accidental poisoning and behavioral disorders caused by drinking ranked highly, too. Drunk driving also played a huge factor. According to the CDC, nearly one-third of all fatal road accidents in the US were caused by alcohol. On average, this means drunk driving killed one American every 51 minutes. The total cost of all this carnage is estimated at over $59 billion annually—roughly equivalent to the entire GDP of Croatia.

8 It Increases Sexual Assault Rates

It isn’t just where individual health is concerned that alcohol can have a hugely negative impact. We’ve known for years that alcohol and sexual assault rates have a disturbing connection to one another.

In one widely cited Harvard study from 2004, college campuses with reputations for binge drinking had significantly higher rates of sexual assault. The team first split colleges into either low, medium, or high binge drinking environments. Those classified as low had less than 35 percent of the student body drinking more than five drinks in one sitting over a two-week period. In those classified as medium, 36–50 percent of the students did so. In those classified high, the rate was over 50 percent. The team then concluded that being female at a medium or high binge drinking college increased your risk of getting raped by a shocking 1.5 times. A 2013 study later found similar results.

That’s a serious increase, and it doesn’t just occur on campuses. An influential 1990s study found around half of all attackers committed sexual assaults while drunk, while half of all victims likewise reported being intoxicated. That’s not to suggest the victims were in any way to blame. There’s only one bad guy here and that’s the scumbag rapist. Nor is it intended to suggest that one beer turns all men into rape-happy hooligans. Studies show only 3 percent of college men commit 90 percent of all campus rapes. It does show how entwined alcohol and violence can be, though, in a way it simply isn’t with other drugs.

7 No Other Drug Is As Bad For Public Safety

What would you say is the world’s most dangerous drug? If we’re talking about dangers to others, most of us would probably think of crack or meth. We would be wrong. According to a British study, the answer is alcohol.

In 2010, respected journal The Lancet published a study led by former government adviser Professor David Nutt into the dangers posed by 20 available drugs. While heroin, crack, and methamphetamine took the top places for dangers posed to individual users, one drug was found to be far and away the most harmful to society at large. According to the study, use of alcohol was over twice as likely to result in harm to others as use of crack cocaine was. Out of a possible score of 100, it scored 45, compared to slightly over 20 for heroin in second place.

The reasons for this are varied, with the researchers focusing on factors such as crime, environmental damage, family conflict, international damage, economic cost, and damage to community cohesion. While some drugs scored well in one category, alcohol was the only one to sweep the boards. Part of that may be due to its ready availability, but it’s still an astounding finding. By way of comparison, cocaine and cannabis both scored under 10 for harm to others, while ecstasy, LSD, and mushrooms scored around zero.

6 It Kills More Teenagers Than Any Other Drug

Every couple of years, some new drug will come along and whip up a media panic about teenagers. In September 2015, K2 was supposedly turning people into nude, psychotic zombies. Before that, it was Cloud 9 putting kids in hospitals. What every single one of these scare stories always glosses over is that we already have a readily available, extremely deadly drug doing the rounds among our kids. Every year, 4,300 US teenagers die from drinking alcohol.

That’s more people than died during 9/11. According to nonprofits and pressure groups such as Mothers Against Drink Driving (MADD), it’s more than are killed each year by all illegal drugs combined. Even if you think their data might be susceptible to bias (they are an overtly anti-alcohol charity after all), if they’re anywhere in the ballpark, it’s still an enormous number. To give it a comparison point, the panic-inducing Cloud 9 was linked to only a handful of deaths, some of which may have been falsely attributed by an overexcited media. If we can get worked up over a comparatively tiny number of deaths, all while ignoring a much bigger epidemic, it’s tempting to wonder what’s going wrong.

5 Media Bias Against Other Drugs Is Unbelievable

The media loves a simple narrative. Fitting a nuanced argument into a headline is a tricky task, so most outlets don’t even bother to try. Sometimes this reaches absurd heights, as in the case of drug reporting. Since the 1990s, it’s been utterly clear that the media’s response to drug and alcohol stories is horrendously biased at best, and downright dangerous at worst.

Between 1990 and 1999, Scotland recorded 2,255 drug-related deaths. Curious to see how the media reported these deaths, Alasdair J.M. Forsyth compared every single Scottish news report on a fatality against the coroner reports. Of the 546 deaths that received coverage, the bias was profound. Only 1 in 72 deaths from morphine was reported, because it didn’t fit into any easy media narrative. By contrast, one in every five deaths from heroin got coverage, as did one of every eight cocaine-related deaths. But the biggest imbalance by far came from ecstasy. Nearly every single one of the 28 deaths ascribed to ecstasy received coverage in this period, a period that just happened to coincide with a media scare in the UK. Meanwhile, only 1 in 256 aspirin-related deaths got a similar treatment.

The point is that “bad” drugs get a disproportionate amount of press attention, reinforcing the belief that these deaths are happening all the time. In the exact same period of time, alcohol killed around 2,000 people—over 70 times the number killed by ecstasy—but wasn’t once reported as a deadly menace. As a result, talking seriously about the dangers of alcohol compared to other drugs becomes all but impossible.

4 Many Of The Alternatives Are Safer

Plenty of drugs are highly dangerous. Heroin, crack, GBH, and crystal meth can all mess you up in ways we’d rather not think about, leading to horrendous health problems. But so can alcohol. And while all those drugs are rightly frowned upon in our societies, alcohol is basically given a free pass.

The differences are even starker compared to other drugs we might consider socially acceptable. While cannabis does have detrimental health effects and may be linked with an increased risk of mental illness, it is far safer for you than drinking. David Nutt’s research that we referred to earlier placed the risk of cannabis to a user as less than half of that of alcohol. In recorded history, there has never been a single confirmed case of a marijuana overdose. The DEA has estimated you would need to smoke nearly 700 kilograms (1,500 lb) of the stuff in 15 minutes to be at risk of death. (Good luck staying awake.) Even the Dude in The Big Lebowski couldn’t manage something like that.

Other recreational drugs are even safer. The risk of death from ecstasy is roughly equivalent to that of riding a horse, while that from both LSD and magic mushrooms is essentially nonexistent (provided you don’t accidentally pick and eat a poisonous mushroom). It’d be a fool’s game to try and get people to give up drinking entirely, but cutting down becomes even harder when many of the safer alternatives are illegal.

3 The Alternatives Would Still Be Safer If Taken On A Larger Scale

One major obstacle to comparing alcohol with other drugs is that alcohol is both legal and widely available, whereas most others are not. Even in states like Colorado that passed pot legalization laws, not every city is selling, and it remains illegal in much of the country. This means there are way more drinkers than there are users of any other kind of drug.

Taking this into consideration, statistics about things like public health spending on alcohol can suddenly seem weaker. After all, some would argue that we’d see equally expensive (if slightly different) health problems if everyone was smoking pot all the time. That may not be true. In 1995, the World Health Organization (WHO) conducted a study into drugs and public health. They concluded that even if everyone started using cannabis as regularly as they do alcohol or tobacco, the effect on public health would likely be significantly lower.

That’s not to say there wouldn’t be serious health issues arising from widespread pot consumption, especially among teenagers. We’re not trying to convert everyone to be militantly pro-marijuana here. But the overall effect would still be less than at current levels of alcohol consumption, even though most legal systems treat alcohol as the safer substance.

2 Alcohol And Child Abuse

It’s a terrible fact of life that some adults get off on abusing kids. Whether through violent sexual acts or just through miserable, half-assed neglect, there are parents out there who do nothing but make their children’s lives a misery. Toss alcohol abuse into that mix and you’ve got the ingredients for a nightmare.

Studies have found that children who have either one or two alcoholic parents are anywhere between 2 to 13 times more likely to experience an awful situation at home. Known as adverse childhood experiences, these awful situations could be anything from living in forced squalor to seeing their mom get hit to being deliberately abused. In each case, the likelihood of that abuse increased with alcoholism. In situations where both parents were alcoholics, for example, children were 13 times more likely to grow up with a battered mother. Other studies have linked alcoholism to “profound suffering” in families.

Again, it’s not just the children of alcoholics who have crappy childhoods. Having a mom or dad who’s addicted to crack, gambling, or heroin can produce similar results. But the point is those activities are largely illegal or sensibly restricted. Alcohol is completely entwined with Western culture and its consumption actively encouraged.

1 It’s Basically Our Culture’s Fault

After reading all that, here’s a theory that might surprise you. According to respected anthropologist Dr. Anne Fox, alcohol doesn’t cause violence. She maintains there’s no proof that drinking can trigger violent acts in people. Instead, she thinks our problems with alcohol go deeper. It’s our culture that’s to blame.

If alcohol itself caused violence, we’d see uniform levels of violence across all drinking cultures. But places like Iceland drink way more and in a much more reckless manner than somewhere like Australia, all while experiencing significantly less alcohol-related violence. Instead, Dr. Fox says that how we behave when drunk is mostly how our culture teaches us to behave. That’s potentially very worrying.

Most of us grew up in cultures that taught us getting drunk was a wonderful thing to do. In countless movies, TV shows, and books, drinking is shown as something that normal people do regularly. At the same time, we’re taught to connect this popular pastime with violence and lack of self-control. The result is a powder keg of all worst possible outcomes. We put our own health at risk by drinking at a level we’d consider excessive if done with any other sort of drug. Then we endanger the health of others and those around us by acting out our violent, thuggish roles when we’re completely wasted.

We’re not trying to agitate for prohibition. It failed spectacularly last time, and we like the occasional drink as much as the next group of list-writers. But maybe we need to stop this glamorization of alcohol and the violence that accompanies it. Happily, this might already be happening. In Britain at least, rates for binge drinking among teenagers are dropping sharply, and young people are becoming more sensible in their alcohol consumption. Here’s to hoping the trend continues.

Alcohol is a double-edged sword that’s been enjoyed for centuries by individuals from all walks of life. It can lend courage to the cowardly, creativity to the unimaginative, and, of course, be the downfall of one’s life. From excessive consumption during colonial times to bizarre drinking traditions from around the world, the following 10 cases explore random, little-known facts—both scientific and historic—regarding God’s liquid gift to mankind.

10‘Beer Day’

Iceland, whose alcohol consumption has increased 35 percent between 1992 and 2012, has an official holiday on the first of March known as “Beer Day.”

The history behind the date symbolizes much more than simply becoming intoxicated. It all began in 1915 when prohibition went into effect in Iceland. A short time after, Spain threatened that if Iceland didn’t begin importing Spanish wines once again then Spain would stop all importation of salted cod, which would be a major blow to Iceland’s economy.

Iceland complied, and in 1921, the ban on red Spanish and Portuguese wines was lifted. However, beer was still prohibited until March 1, 1989, when Iceland declared that people could legally buy beer again. On that date, people flocked to the streets in celebration and have continued to do so ever since.

9Alcohol Legality

The drinking age in the United States has varied between 18 to its current state of 21. Such an age would be absurd in 10 percent of the world, given that a total of 19 countries have no minimum drinking age at all, such as Sierra Leone and Cambodia. Fortunately, Antigua, Barbuda, and the Central African Republic are a little stricter when it comes to alcohol consumption—their minimum drinking ages are between 10 and 15 years old.

However, no laws are more stringent than the 16 countries where alcohol is illegal to consume at any age, such as Afghanistan, Somalia, and Pakistan. Iran, whose ban on alcohol was instituted after the 1979 revolution, displayed just how serious a criminal offence drinking was in 2012, when two men were sentenced to death for drinking alcohol. The men had two prior convictions for which they each received 80 lashes.

8Breakfast Of Champions

Most of us are familiar with the oh-so-delicious mimosa, the champagne and orange juice concoction that has forever turned drinking at sunrise into an acceptable and classy experience. On the other hand, some countries have taken the tradition of morning boozing to a whole new level.

The Black Isle Brewery in Scotland has recently released Cold Turkey, a rich beer marketed for morning drinkers that has “all the malty taste of a multigrain cereal.” Although its alcohol content is a measly 2.8 percent, many in Scotland are concerned that the move will promote alcoholism in a country that has the eighth highest alcohol consumption in the world.

At the other end of the scale is the 38-percent Danish liquor eye-opener, Gammel Dansk. Described as being similar to Jagermeister, Gammel Dansk is traditionally drunk at breakfast, straight up and at room temperature. In fact, many people in Denmark prefer to have a small glass along with their coffee to get the day started.

And then there’s the famous Bavarian breakfast. In Bavaria, a German federal state in the southeast of the country, many people take the edge off in the morning by enjoying a cold, tall beer. In fact, Bavarians even have a word for it: fruhschoppen, which means “drinking alcohol before noon.”

7Colonial Times

Americans have never been shy when it comes to indulging in an occasional drink or two, and perhaps it all dates back to colonial times, when Americans drank more alcohol than at any other time in history. In fact, the average American drank about eight ounces of alcohol a day. It was typical for people to drink beer or cider for breakfast. Even children boozed in colonial America, and it all began in England.

During this time, waterways in Europe were polluted, causing many to become gravely—often fatally—ill. For this reason, they substituted alcohol for water, and the tradition carried over to the New World. Whiskey was often given to “cure” laryngitis and colic, hot brandy was taken for cholera, and even a shot of liquor was essential for pregnant women to ease their discomfort.

Founding father John Adams began his mornings with a draft of hard cider, and John Hancock was known to smuggle wine. In fact, more than 100 years prior, in 1622, the Virginia Company of London wrote Governor Francis Wyatt at Jamestown complaining that the colony was being hurt by the colonists’ drinking habits. However, those concerns clearly fell on deaf ears, and the tradition enthusiastically continued.

6Alcoholic Animals

The pen-tailed treeshrews of Malaysia are said to have the world’s highest alcohol tolerance. Fruit bats as well as the slow loris are not shy when it comes to indulging, eagerly consuming fermented fruits and nectar from plants and flower buds.

However, one of the more interesting cases is that of the rhesus macaques, who have the tendency to drink until they fall down or pass out, according to a 2006 study. The study also showed that the monkeys who drank the most often lived alone and drank toward the end of the day, a pattern similar to that of humans.

Vervet monkeys, sometimes referred to as green monkeys, have become accustomed to the ethanol in the fermented sugar cane which can be found throughout the Caribbean. Interestingly enough, research also showed that the younger monkeys drank more alcohol than the adult monkeys, according to Jorge Juarez of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.

The list continues, from butterflies that drink beer to boost their spermatophores to male fruit flies that turn to booze after being sexually rejected.

5Genetic Makeup

Studies have indicated that alcoholism is influenced by both environmental and genetic factors. One particular group with a historically high rate of alcoholism is Native Americans. Dr. Ting-Kai Li, professor of medicine and biochemistry, believes that this is due to an inherited gene mutation. According to Dr. Li, Native Americans do not have the protective genes that allow the metabolism of acetaldehyde.

If acetaldehyde is not broken down during metabolism, the accumulation leads to significant and unpleasant physiological effects. Researchers also believe that the accumulation of acetaldehyde can actually stimulate drinking.

Of course, there are other factors that play into alcoholism, such as one’s environment. Whatever the case may be, Native Americans as a group have the highest alcohol-related deaths of all ethnic groups in the United States, and therefore such research is crucial to understanding and helping those affected.

4Uganda’s Waragi Epidemic

Over a three-week period in 2010, more than 100 people in Uganda died after drinking illegal homemade banana gin laced with methanol. Before dying, those affected experienced blindness and suffered kidney and liver failure. Hundreds of households were searched in the days following the deaths, looking for homemade gin producers.

Waragi, as it’s called in Uganda, is made from bananas, millet, or sugarcane and is sold for one-sixth the price of leading regulated alcohol brands. Unfortunately, the government of Uganda made it illegal to produce unregulated waragi, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of the liquor in the country.

The law was quickly proven to be ineffective. For starters, the illegal production of waragi carries a fine of only $1.50 USD and politicians refuse to crack down on rogue waragi producers, believing that it would cripple many household incomes, ultimately losing their vote in the elections. Regardless, as long as the law stands and people continue to make waragi using whatever chemicals they can obtain, the deaths will continue to rise.

3Alcohol And Pregnancy

The debate as to whether or not an expecting mother could safely have a small amount—say, a glass of wine—has been a contentious debate for quite some time. A recent Danish study found that women who drink one glass of wine per week had children with greater behavioral and emotional well-being as opposed to mothers who refrained from drinking, although the CDC still recommends that pregnant women abstain from alcohol entirely.

However, there are many doctors who find that an occasional glass of wine is harmless for the unborn child. Dr. Marjorie Greenfield, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology, believes that there is no evidence that light drinking is dangerous, and that one or two drinks per weeks is “OK.”

2Alcohol’s Sobering Effects

We all know how detrimental alcohol abuse can be. Medically speaking, we tend to think of liver cirrhosis when talking about alcoholism, but the fact is, cirrhosis is just one of many medical ailments attributed to alcohol abuse. For instance, alcoholism can lead to a decrease in the body’s ability to absorb vitamin B1 (thiamine), thus diminishing the stores we have in our body.

This deficiency causes a profound effect on our neurological system, a condition known as Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. This neurological disease has a range of physical abnormalities, including an inability to coordinate voluntary movements like standing or walking as well as ocular impairments like double vision and involuntary eye movements. Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome can also cause confusion and memory loss, which often leads those affected to create imaginary events to fill in the gaps, medically known as confabulation.

Perhaps the most life-threatening and common ailment seen in chronic alcohol abuse is congestive heart failure due to dilated cardiomyopathy. Dilated cardiomyopathy basically refers to the fact that the heart has stretched so much, it often appears to look like a balloon on a chest X-ray, thus affecting its ability to pump blood throughout the body.

1The Federal Poisoning Plan

Between December 25 and 27, 1926, the city of New York saw 31 alcohol-related deaths and countless others desperately ill. What was originally speculated as your typical alcohol poisoning turned out to be far more disturbing given that the deaths were courtesy of the US government.

When Prohibition took effect in 1920, law enforcement began denaturing industrial alcohol by adding toxic chemicals. This plan was conducted with the hopes of deterring people from re-purifying the liquid so that it could be consumed. As time passed and the speakeasies and underground bars flourished, the anti-drinking forces in the government developed a new denaturing process that would make industrial-grade alcohol twice as poisonous.

TIME magazine noted in a 1927 article that three ordinary drinks of this concoction created by the government would cause blindness. Government officials stated that the individuals who consumed the alcohol did it under their own free will, and the act was therefore nothing short of a deliberate suicide. The government insisted that they held no responsibility. Prohibition came to an end five years later, and by that time, the actions of the United States government had claimed the lives of at least 10,000 people.

Adam is just a hubcap trying to hold on in the fast lane.

Alcohol often gets a bad rap. Check the number of accidents caused by drunk drivers or the people in prison for offenses they committed after they got too drunk.

However, alcohol also has its good qualities. By that, we mean that it has saved the lives of several people and animals. Most of the time, these people were administered some shots of vodka or whiskey or some cans of beer to cure their medical ailments. In one instance, some guys were saved by the cork of a vodka bottle.

10 Nguyen Van Nhat

In early 2019, doctors prescribed 15 cans of beer for Nguyen Van Nhat, a 48-year-old Vietnamese man. Curiously, the weird alcoholic prescription was used to cure alcohol poisoning.

Trouble started for Nhat after he consumed a drink containing methanol, a poisonous form of alcohol. The alcohols we often consume are made with ethanol. Nhat was admitted to intensive care where doctors passed 15 cans of beer into his body.

Doctors first administered three cans of beer to Nhat. Thereafter, they administered one can of beer every hour to rid his body of the poisonous methanol. This worked because the liver prioritizes the breakdown of ethanol over methanol. While the liver concentrated on the ethanol, doctors performed dialysis to rid Nhat’s body of the methanol.

Doctors would have used vodka in place of beer because vodka has a higher ethanol content. However, they used beer because no vodka was available. Nhat was discharged after the procedure.^[1]

9 Ronald Aldom

In 2012, 77-year-old Ronald Aldom was admitted to intensive care after suffering from ventricular tachycardia (VT). VT is caused by irregular heart rhythms and is often the result of an earlier heart attack.

Aldom had an implantable defibrillator connected to his heart after a previous heart attack. This device passed shocks to his heart whenever his heart rhythms became abnormal. Unfortunately, the implantable defibrillator malfunctioned and delivered excess shocks to Aldom’s body.^[2]

Doctors attempted regular treatment, but it did not work. As a last option, they used what they call “ethanol ablation.” This means that they passed alcohol into Aldom’s heart to cause a controlled heart attack.

Doctors inserted a catheter into Aldom’s groin and directed it to an artery in the affected part of his heart. Then they passed a small amount of alcohol through the catheter. The alcohol caused the muscles in that area of the heart to stop working, which resulted in the heart rate returning to normal.

8 Denis Duthie

In June 2012, 65-year-old Denis Duthie was saved by whiskey after he temporarily went blind. Trouble began for the diabetic man after he drank some vodka that interfered with his diabetes medication. It caused him to go blind as he walked into his bedroom.

Duthie did not quickly realize he had gone blind. He thought the lights just went off. He only realized what had happened when he couldn’t find the light switch. He went to bed, hoping his sight would be restored the next day. He was wrong.

Duthie was taken into surgery after he arrived at the hospital. Doctors suspected that he was suffering from formaldehyde poisoning, which could be caused by drinking methanol. Interestingly, this could be treated with ethanol, which is in whiskey.

The doctors did not have enough ethanol in the hospital, so somebody went to get a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label whiskey from a nearby store. Doctors poured the whiskey into a drip and passed it directly into Duthie’s stomach.^[3]

He remained in a coma for five days. Interestingly, he never got drunk because doctors passed the whiskey directly into his stomach. He would have become drunk if the alcohol had been administered through his mouth.

7 Charles Joughin

Charles Joughin was the head baker on the Titanic when it sank in the early morning of April 15, 1912. Joughin behaved eccentrically after the ship hit the iceberg and until it sank. He first had his staff deliver 50 loaves of bread to people boarding the lifeboats. Then he went into his room to have a drink.

Later, he left for the lifeboats—and actually got one—but abandoned his seat to allow more women and children aboard. He returned to his room to have another drink. The Titanic started to sink as he finished his drink.

Joughin threw chairs into the water so survivors could have something to hold onto. Then he went into the pantry to get more drinks. It was then that the Titanic broke into two. Joughin was right on the stern of the ship as it went underwater. He remained in the cold water for two and a half hours until he was rescued by a lifeboat.

Ultimately, Joughin merely suffered swollen feet, which is admirable considering that lots of people froze to death in the cold ocean. An inquiry determined that Joughin had survived the cold waters because he was drunk. He had so much alcohol in his system that he didn’t freeze.^[4]

Interestingly, a drunk person normally freezes to death faster than a sober person. However, Joughin was too drunk and the water was so cold that his blood vessels just tightened. He would have frozen to death if he had not been drunk enough.

6 Cloe The Dog

A few years ago, Stacy Zammit entered her Melbourne, Australia, home to find Cloe, her American Staffordshire Terrier, behaving abnormally. Cloe fell whenever she attempted to stand. By night, she had lost her appetite and started crying.

Zammit took Cloe to a veterinarian who determined that the puppy had ingested antifreeze. Zammit and the vet suspected that Cloe had licked the chemical from some parked cars. Antifreeze is dangerous to humans and animals because it contains ethylene glycol, a poisonous chemical compound that causes kidney failure and death.

The vet considered administering some alcohol to Cloe. Unfortunately, there was none in the clinic. Luckily for Cloe, he had a bottle of vodka that had been gifted to him by a member of his staff. The vet poured the vodka in a drip and administered it to Cloe.

Over one-third of the bottle was passed into Cloe’s body over the next two days. That amount is equivalent to a human drinking eight shots of vodka at four-hour intervals. Cloe made a full recovery.^[5]

5 Joseph Lehr

In May 2016, Joseph Lehr, Michael Clapman, and an unnamed friend were sailing 183 meters (600 ft) off the coast of Rockaway Beach in New York when their boat lost a drain plug. Water started entering the boat through the hole.

The trio unsuccessfully tried covering the holes with several items including metal and socks. About 1 meter (3 ft) of water had already entered the boat by the time they got close to shore. For a while, it seemed like they were going to sink.

A man having a party saved the day when he threw some corks at them. Lehr grabbed one, which was from an Absolut vodka bottle, and used it to cover the leak. Lehr and his friends were escorted to safety by the New York City Fire Department and the New York Police Department.^[6]

4 Two Elephants

In 2012, two circus elephants were saved from freezing to death after circus officials gave them some shots of vodka. The show was traveling through the cold Novosibirsk region of Siberia, Russia, when the trailer carrying the elephants caught on fire.

The elephants were released from the trailer into the cold where temperatures reached -40 degrees Celsius (-40 °F). Their ears soon got frostbitten, and it looked like they were going to die of hypothermia. Luckily, the staff saved their lives when they administered some shots of vodka.

The elephants loved the drink so much that they trumpeted in appreciation. (The sort of thing that drunk humans do.) Then the animals were led to a garage where they remained until another trailer arrived. Rostislav Shilo, the director of Novosibirsk Zoo, later clarified that the elephants never got drunk. Circus officials had diluted the vodka with water.^[7]

3 Unnamed Tourist

In 2007, doctors in Australia saved the life of a suicidal Italian tourist with some shots of vodka. The unnamed 24-year-old had drunk antifreeze in a failed suicide attempt. He was rushed to intensive care where staff administered a drip filled with medicinal alcohol to counter the effects of the deadly poison.

They later turned to regular alcohol after their supplies ran out. The alcohol of choice here was vodka. For three days, doctors filled the tourist’s drip with three shots of vodka every hour. Fortunately, they put him in a deliberate coma so he would not feel the effects of getting stoned. He survived and left the hospital 20 days later.^[8]

2 Charlie The Dog

Charlie was another dog that almost died of kidney failure after licking ethylene glycol. The Maltese terrier licked the chemical compound on the floor of the garage in the home of its owner in Melbourne, Australia.

Charlie was transported to Melbourne Animal Accident and Emergency hospital where vets passed a drip of vodka into his stomach through his nose.

The vodka worked because the enzymes that convert ethylene glycol into the deadly glycolic and oxalic acids prefer attaching to alcohol rather than ethylene glycol. Vodka is often the drink of choice because it is almost pure alcohol.

Over the next two days, veterinarians gave the vodka to Charlie while they extracted the ethylene glycol. Charlie made a full recovery, although he was still experiencing a hangover at the time he was discharged.^[9]

1 Tipsy The Cat

The cat was named Tipsy after some shots of alcohol saved his life. The dying cat was found outside a shop in Lowood, Queensland, Australia. He was taken to a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals hospital where he was discovered to have ingested antifreeze.

Tipsy was almost dead when he arrived at the hospital. He was weak, and his kidneys were almost failing. The vets feared that he would not survive for another hour. They wanted to administer alcohol, but there was none in the hospital.^[10]

Luckily, one of the nurses had an unopened bottle of vodka that someone had given her as a Christmas gift. Doctors diluted the vodka and administered it to the cat through a drip. The cat remained on the drip for 10 hours. Tipsy went on to make a full recovery, although he did have a hangover.

Alcohol can be a tricky experience. Drink enough and it can make almost any event more fun and memorable. Drink too much and it does the opposite – you forget everything and the bits you do remember, you probably wish you didn’t.

But this doesn’t apply only to bachelor parties and New Year’s celebrations. In fact, we’re going to take a look at ten historical events where alcohol definitely played a crucial role in the outcome.

10. The Wedding of George IV

It would be fair to say that when King George III of England announced the engagement of his son and heir, George IV, to Caroline of Brunswick in 1794, the junior George wasn’t a fan of the arrangement. For starters, he was already technically married to Maria Fitzherbert, although their marriage was invalid under English law. Plus, he preferred a carefree life filled with wine, women, and gambling, but eventually, he wasn’t left with much of a choice. George IV had racked up so many debts thanks to his excessive spending and neither his father nor Parliament would bail him out unless he found a suitable Protestant wife and sired an heir.

Enter Caroline of Brunswick. She had the perfect pedigree, but not much else going for her. Allegedly, the first words George uttered when he laid eyes on his bride-to-be were: “Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.” 

And that glass of brandy was followed by another one…and then another one…and then, well, you get the idea. George could hardly stand to be in her presence sober, and when it finally came time to tie the knot, on April 8, 1795, the prince regent was so drunk that he had to be carried up the aisle. He slurred his way through the vows and even started crying at one point. The ceremony was followed by what we assume was an incredibly awkward reception and then, finally, the wedding night, where George failed to perform his “royal duty” because he passed out in the fire grate.

9. The Eggnog Riot

West Point has a long and varied history that goes back all the way to the birth of America. Situated in a strategic position on the Hudson River, it was a valuable military post during the Revolutionary War and gained infamy when Benedict Arnold tried to turn it over to the British. Then, in 1802, it became the first military academy in the country. 

In 1817, Colonel Sylvanus Thayer became the academy’s superintendent and developed the curriculum which is still partly used today. After a few years in charge, Thayer decided that discipline at West Point was on a downward slope, mainly due to drinking. Alcohol was already prohibited but, of course, everyone still got drunk and the faculty generally looked the other way unless the offense was particularly egregious. But in 1826, Thayer put his foot down and said absolutely no alcohol, not even for that year’s Christmas party. Unsurprisingly, the cadets ignored him and smuggled a few gallons of whiskey into campus a few days prior. Then, on Christmas Eve, they got wasted on eggnog.

The rowdiness started with some loud singing. Not too bad at first, but things turned serious when two of the academy captains, Ethan Hitchcock and William Thornton, tried to end the party. Hitchcock literally read the Riot Act to a group of cadets, but instead of dispersing, they armed themselves with sticks, rocks, and swords, looking for a fight. One of them even fired a shot at the captain when he tried to open their door. The captains called for their superiors when they realized that the nog hit the fan, and the drunken cadets took advantage of the opportunity by completely trashing the barracks in order to barricade the doors and windows. 

The following day, everyone was hungover, wondering what they had done the night before. Ninety cadets had taken part in the riot, including one Jefferson Davis, future President of the Confederacy. Ultimately, though, only 19 were court-martialed, plus the soldier who allowed them to smuggle the booze on campus. Eleven were expelled.

8. The Field of the Cloth of Gold

In June 1520, King Henry VIII of England and King Francis I of France held a two-week-long summit at Balinghem, near Calais, in order to strengthen the bond between the two nations. Both kings were keen to show off their wealth and opulence in front of the other one, which is why the event became known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

There were huge feasts every day. The food was plentiful, the wine was unceasing, and the music was raucous. There was dancing, there was theater, and there was even a dragon kite made especially for the occasion, that featured both royal symbols entwined with one another.

And, of course, there were lots of games to keep the people entertained. Jousting was the most popular spectacle, but wrestling was also a welcomed sight, especially when the weather turned sour. Then, one day, after a few glasses of wine, Henry did the unthinkable – he broke protocol and challenged King Francis to a wrestling match, threatening to lay the smackdown on his candy ass. Not wanting to look like a jabroni, Francis accepted the challenge and met Henry inside the squared circle for a literal royal rumble.

Both kings were young lions, in their mid-to-late 20s, but on this occasion, Francis proved to be the cream of the crop, easily going over his English counterpart. Henry, however, was gracious in defeat and suggested an archery contest for a rematch, where he emerged triumphant.

7. Andrew Jackson’s Inauguration

On March 4, 1829, Andrew Jackson was inaugurated as the seventh President of the United States. After the swearing-in ceremony in front of the Capitol Building, Jackson invited the crowd of roughly 21,000 on-lookers to join him at the White House for an open house reception. 

Unfortunately for him, most of the crowd took him up on the offer. It wasn’t long before the White House was filled to the brim with rich and poor, upper and working class, who wanted to congratulate the new president. The raucousness wasn’t helped by the addition of alcohol and before you knew it, the furniture was knocked over, dishes and glasses were broken on the floor, and muddy footprints were everywhere. One attendee, Margaret Smith, described the scene:

“Ladies fainted, men were seen with bloody noses and such a scene of confusion took place as is impossible to describe,—those who got in could not get out by the door again, but had to scramble out of windows.”

President Jackson himself, ultimately, made his escape through a window and sought refuge at a nearby hotel. Eventually, Jackson’s steward had the bright idea of installing large tubs filled with whiskey punch on the White House lawn, and that managed to lure out most of the crowd, like moths to the flame, but the carpets smelled of cheese and booze for months after.

6. The Signing of the Constitution

In September 1787, 55 delegates from all the American states except Rhode Island attended the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The gathering culminated with the signing of the United States Constitution on September 17, although only 39 delegates agreed to sign the document. Everyone knew it was a landmark moment, so the delegates celebrated it the best way they knew how – by getting absolutely hammered.

Two days before the signing, all 55 delegates gathered at a local tavern and partied like the British were getting ready to invade again. Curiously enough, the bill for that historic evening was preserved, so here is what the Framers of the Constitution drank between them: 54 bottles of Madeira wine, 60 bottles of claret, eight bottles of whiskey, 42 assorted bottles of porter, beer, and hard cider, and seven bowls of alcoholic punch.

The cost for a party that went down in the history books – £90, which is over $20,000 today. This included a two percent breakage fee from the innkeeper since it seemed that some of the delegates got a little too rowdy with his furniture.

5. Washington’s Entry into Politics

Staying with the Founding Fathers, we’re going to focus on the foundingest (not a real word) father of all – George Washington – and how alcohol helped his entry into politics. By the time he was in his mid-20s, Washington was already a distinguished military man thanks to his role in the French and Indian War, so a political position was the next natural step for him. 

In 1755, the 24-year-old Washington ran for a seat in Virginia’s House of Burgesses, which was the colony’s elected representative body. But the future father of the country lost his first campaign, garnering only 40 votes while his opponent secured 271. How so? His opponent got his voters wasted on beer, wine, whiskey, and rum punch.

Even so, lessons were learned, so three years later, Washington ran again for the same office and, this time, he didn’t skimp out on the booze. His electoral office had 144 gallons of rum, beer, and hard cider ready and waiting for the thirsty voter willing to cast his vote for George Washington. The result – Washington won handily with 331 votes and launched his career in politics.

4. The October Revolution

The October Revolution was one of the most crucial episodes in the modern history of Russia, which allowed the Bolsheviks led by Lenin to seize power and, eventually, form the Soviet Union. It all started on November 7, 1917 (or October 25 going by the old calendar) in Petrograd, today known as Saint Petersburg, when the Bolshevik Red Guards captured the Winter Palace. Of course, not everyone was on their side. The Bolsheviks had a civil war ahead of them and needed to prepare. There was just one problem, though – when they took over the Winter Palace, they also seized the largest private wine collection in the world.

Lenin couldn’t just deny access to the people. His whole shtick was that the riches of the aristocracy actually belonged to the laboring masses. So what followed was the grandaddy of all keggers, as the people of Petrograd got absolutely smashed on the czar’s private stash. Predictably, this led to drunken mobs, lootings, and street violence, but Lenin hoped that they would get it out of their system after a few days.

They did not. As Bolshevik playwright Anatoly Lunacharsky put it: “The whole of Petrograd is drunk.” Nothing the Bolsheviks did could stop the thirsty masses. They erected walls around the cellar, but they were broken down. They placed guards, but they just started selling the booze. They poured the wine into the streets, and the crowds drank it from the gutter. The city’s jail cells were all filled with drunken looters. There was only one solution. Martial law was imposed and the Bolsheviks had to wait for weeks until the booze finally ran out.

3. Lincoln’s Assassination

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln is already an infamous moment in history, so we’re not going to dwell on it too much. We’re just going to look at the role that alcohol played in the proceedings.

First up is John Wilkes Booth, who initially went to the saloon near Ford’s Theater and had a couple of drinks to strengthen his resolve. His confederate, George Atzerodt, who had been tasked with killing Vice President Andrew Johnson, did the same thing, except that the alcohol had the opposite effect on him. Even though the vice president was sitting all alone in his hotel room, Atzerodt couldn’t bring himself to do it, so he just spent the night drunkenly roaming the city.

Last, but not least, we have Officer John Frederick Parker, the Washington cop who had been assigned to protect the president. If he had been present, could he have stopped Booth from killing Lincoln and changed the course of history? We will never know because during intermission Parker decided to leave the president and go to the Star Saloon next door to have a couple of drinks with Lincoln’s footman and carriage driver. 

2. The Burning of Persepolis

During the mid-4th century BC, Alexander the Great invaded the Achaemenid Empire and, in 330 BC, he captured the Persian capital of Persepolis. When he entered the city, Persepolis was one of the grandest metropolises that the ancient world had ever known. When he left, it was nothing but smoldering ruins. The burning of Persepolis was one of Alexander’s most infamous acts, but the question remains – did he do it on a drunken dare?

Almost all the ancient historians agreed that Alexander and his men were drunk when they burned the place down. They had celebrated their victory by looting, feasting, and, of course, drinking the night away. But historian Diodorus Siculus points the finger at a woman named Thais, an Athenian who got close to the drunken Alexander and kept prodding him throughout the festivities, telling him what an achievement it would be for him to destroy the pride of the Persians. Which was the ancient equivalent of a “double-dog dare” so, obviously, Alexander was left with no choice.

Only one Roman historian named Arrian claimed that Alexander was sober when he burned Persepolis and that he did it simply as revenge for what the Persians did to Athens during the Greco-Persian Wars a hundred years earlier. 

1. The Rise of Agriculture

Is beer responsible for civilization as we know it? According to some archaeologists, the answer is maybe. We can all agree that the agricultural revolution was a key element in the development of the earliest human societies. Instead of going out to hunt and gather, people decided to grow stuff and then make other stuff with it. The places where agriculture thrived soon evolved into the first villages and boom! Another ancient civilization is born.

Tradition tells us that early humans domesticated grain for bread, but maybe they used it for beer first. This is known as the beer-before-bread hypothesis and, as you can tell from the name, it is not a proven theory yet, it’s just an idea. It has been around for over 60 years and it is gaining more and more acceptance. 

The intoxicating effect of alcohol would have given it an important ceremonial role. At the moment, the Natufian culture from the Levant holds the record for the oldest man-made alcohol thanks to some 13,000-year-old stone mortars that were used to brew beer, and they, too, were believed to drink the booze during ritual feasts to venerate the dead. This could suggest why ancient cultures like the Natufians would prize beer over