2. By Walter Kowalski

3. When Europeans came to America, Aztecs used cocoa beans to prepare a highly revered royal drink called “chocolatl” which meant “warm liquid”.

4. When the Spanish conqueror of Mexico, Hernan Cortez met the Aztec Emperor Montezuma, who drank 50 or more portions of this daily, he and his men found the drink too bitter, so he decided to sweeten it with sugar.

5. The Spanish, who found chocolate to be very popular kept how to process it a secret for 100 years!

6. Initially very expensive, chocolate prices eventually fell due to mass production methods.

7. 1879: first solid chocolate 1876: first milk chocolate 1828: invention of the cocoa press, which made chocolate cheaper and less bitter by squeezing out cocoa butter.

8. Chocolate’s current level of popularity in the U.S. today originated due to it’s distribution to troops during World War I. Today, it is still a part of U.S. army D-rations.

9. However, it is the Swiss who consume the most chocolate per capita in the world: 22 pounds, that’s twice as much per person as in the U.S.