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Quote by Tom Standage

“This original version of Coca-Cola contained a small amount of coca extract and therefore a trace of cocaine. (It was eliminated early in the twentieth century, though other extracts derived from coca leaves remain part of the drink to this day.) Its creation was not the accidental concoction of an amateur experimenting in his garden, but the deliberate and painstaking culmination of months of work by an experienced maker of quack remedies.”

Quote by Tom Standage

Book:A History of the World in 6 Glasses
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A History of the World in 6 Glasses

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Author

Tom Standage
Tom Standage

Tom Standage, born in 1969, is a renowned journalist known for his in-depth reporting on technology and history. He is particularly skilled at presenting complex technical concepts and historical events in an accessible manner to a wide audience. more

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“The Uruguayan kid was well-spoken and intelligent; he was a 21-year-old Rasta kid from Montevideo. His name was Cristobal. He seemed really interested in the products and wanted to find a job, saying that if he did not find one soon he would have to leave his girlfriend behind in Barcelona and go back to Uruguay. He had a gorgeous Spanish girlfriend; he showed me a picture, I had met her once. She was so hot, I did not even know how he had gotten close to her. So, I thought the kid had the right motives and the necessary motivation to do this job. His situation was not really that different from mine. He was kind and soft-spoken; he had innocent eyes. You could tell by his voice that he was a good person and would not do anything wrong, not even if he was forced to. I was sure he was not a Silvio-like Spaniard thief who would dare go wild stealing orders and collecting full money for half-delivered products. Silvio might even have involved the store owners, the alleged clients, in the scam to squeeze more products out of poor fool Adam, „The Goof-Proof.”

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“Now she was trying to act that she was mad at her because I got hurt but I could see that she didn’t even put effort in acting or asking around or about what happened or where does it hurt. Which again just kept giving her away more and more minute after minute, I could see Adam laughing behind Martina’s stupidity with Sabrina and I really wanted to finally wake her up to reality from their nightmarish spell. Now she wanted another shot of cognac. She held the empty glass, asking for more without saying a word. Again, very telling. She knew now if she spoke a word she would give herself away even more. Why was she so mad at Sabrina in fact? I grabbed the bottle from the freezer, poured her another shot, and she gulped it down. I left the frosty bottle of cognac on the table and she was playing with the frost with one hand while she held her other hand up in the air. She was fixated with her eyes, her head leaned over the table; she was just staring at the frost on the bottle that she was scratching off with her nails, gazing at it with Evil Eyes. It was as if she were truly possessed. And. She was.”

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“He almost broke the window of the front door coming in about two minutes later, as if he was running from Gran Via and the Urgell corner. Sweating, soaked, with two bags; a luggage in his hand and a bigger side bag across his chest. As he threw his luggage to the ground and jumped up the stairs, trying to run up to me, he slipped on the dangerous, tiled, and sharp steps, falling and rolling back into the corner in a state of misery. He tried to get up again, but he fell back down to the bottom of the stairs. The side bag's strap slipped off his shoulder and jammed his legs as he jumped up again and tried to run up to me once more. In his desperation, he fell back down to the bottom of the stairs when his foot got caught in the side bag again, until he finally removed it screaming like a jackal and tried again for the fourth time. I was just standing at the top of the stairs, trying to contain my amazement and amusement at the same time, wondering what was wrong with this bizarre, crazy-crazy guy. It was like another Benny Hill episode, or a Mr Bean scene. But he sure did get hurt too. It was amazing. Finally he managed to scramble and run up the stairs, madly yelling at me. The wireless office phone was in my hand and we had just spoken a minute ago or two. He must have been heading towards Gran Via towards the airport, which I highly doubted as he was hiding in Europe; he was probably going to a bus station around Plaza Espanya. I doubt he was taking the train in Spain, trying to hide in Europe. Once he managed to get up and as I stood there in disbelief, almost laughing at him, with my hands in the air as if I didn’t know what was going on, he ripped the office phone from my hand and threw it to the ground, breaking it into many pieces upstairs.”

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“Ziggy is in front of the tube, as if nothing much has been happening in his day, watching Scooby Goes Latin! (1990). Maxine after a quick visit to the bathroom to reformat, knowing better than to start in with the Q&A, comes in and sits down next to him about the time it breaks for a commercial. “Hi, Mom.” She wants to enfold him forever. Instead she lets him recap the plot for her. Shaggy, somehow allowed to drive the van, has become confused and made some navigational errors, landing the adventurous quintet eventually in Medellín, Colombia, home at the time to a notorious cocaine cartel, where they stumble onto a scheme by a rogue DEA agent to gain control of the cartel by pretending to be the ghost—what else—of an assassinated drug kingpin. With the help of a pack of local street urchins, however, Scooby and his pals foil the plan. The cartoon comes back on, the villain is brought to justice. “And I would have got away with it, too, he complains, “if it hadn’t been for those Medellín kids!”

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“I'd planned to kill the almost-hour fingering some phone apps whose offbeat missions and designy logos had put the make on my contracted pupils. Still, as coke can't seem to help but use its hopheads to accomplish, I found a quiet study of these apps beyond me, and soon enough my antsy friends and I were in a huddle, having misconstrued our need to chatter as the impetus for lectures and confused one another for captivated listeners at whom we could not spew enough.”

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