Here's Something Victorian I Bet You Didn't Know...

Did you know that the Coca-Cola beverage was invented in the Victorian Era? I surely didn't, until the director of the museum asked me to research it. The original formula for Coca-Cola was created as a medicine to cure morphine addiction. The inventor of the original formula, John Pemberton, was a chemist who also served in the Confederate army. In April 1865, he was injured in the Battle of Columbus. Like most injuried soldiers of the Civil War, he was given daily doses of morphine for the pain (the addictive properties of morphine were not discovered in the 1860s). Also like most injured Civil War veterans, Pemberton became addicted to morphine. He started trying to use his chemistry skills to create a medicine that would cure morphine addiction. The original formula was actually a coca wine made from the coca plant and mixed with French Wine. However, when prohibition began in Atlanta in 1886, he was forced to change the formula so that it was non-alcoholic. That is when Coca-Cola was born. The name was settled on because it tells everyone the two main ingredients, coca and kola. Coca is a plant from which cocaine is extracted and kola is a nut from which we get caffeine.
The first advertisements for Coca-Cola sold the beverage as a patent medicine for 5 cents that was said to cure morphine addiction, headaches, and impotence. By 1888, John Pemberton had 3 different Coca-Cola mixtures on sale in drugstores across Atlanta. He sold the formula to 5 separate businessmen. However, the one who turned it into a worldwide phenomenon was Asa Candler who would later become mayor of Atlanta. Candler eventually bought the 4 other competing companies to become the sole owner of Coca-Cola.
The formula of Coca-Cola has changed several times over the years. They have created Cherry Coke, Lime Coke, Lemon Coke etc. Several different countries have even developed their own local tastes, but the 2 main ingredients have always been coca and kola nut. Once the addictive properties of cocaine were discovered, the fomula was changed to use the leaves of the coca plant after the cocaine had already been extracted, leaving only the flavor of the leaf behind in the beverage.
Now that the world has become very different from Victorian Era culture, Coke has become even more popular. In 2011, John Pemberton started his own Twitter feed. He now has 55,0o0 followers. The Coca-Cola Facebook page has thousands, if not millions, of fans. Coke sponsors athletes, movie theaters, and all other kinds of entertainment. It is no longer just a beverage, it has become a permanent part of people's lives and our culture.