11 Fun Facts about Alcohol

What you didn’t know about alcohol

 

The Hedonistlabs team

 

 

1- The Vikings had a real taste for alcohol: on victory nights, they celebrated by drinking from the skulls of their enemies.

 

2- 12,000 years ago, our ancestors invented beer, which makes our good old pint the oldest drink at the bar.

 

3- During Prohibition, the American government deliberately poisoned alcohol, causing the deaths of around 10,000 people.

 

 

 

 

4- The Manhattan cocktail was created by the mother of Winston Churchill.

 

5- The Russian government only recognised beer as alcohol in 2013.

 

6- In 2019, the German government recognised the hangover as a valid reason for sick leave.

 

7- The word “toast” has Roman origins. From high up on his perch, Bacchus watched a drunk man drop a piece of toasted bread into his wine. Which goes to show you never need to look very far. 

 

8- The ancestor of the mercury thermometer is the brandy thermometer.

 

9- Alcohol makes me need to pee all the time: yes, that’s normal – alcohol blocks the action of an antidiuretic compound in our body. The opposite effect kicks in, and we have to empty our bladder more often.

 

10- Aspirin helps you fight the symptoms of a hangover! No – quite the opposite. Aspirin inhibits the action of the enzymes in the liver that are responsible for eliminating alcohol.

 

11- Over a lifetime, how much time do we spend, on average, recovering from a boozy night out? 

 

 

In the UK, researchers looked into the question with a sample of 2,000 people aged 18 to 78. The results are pretty surprising: on average, we find ourselves in this situation once a month.
That adds up to 2 whole years of our lives lost doing nothing. Days marked by a drop in productivity, an inability to concentrate and a growing sense of guilt.