Coffee and Napoleon

From Fake Coffee To Coffee Empire

Katja Hoyer | Zeitgeist | 10th September 2026 | U

Vietnam is the world’s second-largest coffee producer today, thanks to a deal struck with East Germany in 1980. 10,000 hectares of land were cleared for coffee. The GDR provided $20 million to cover the costs of machinery, irrigation and a hydropower plant in exchange for half of Vietnam’s coffee for 20 years. However, by the time the first proper harvest came in 1990, the GDR had ceased to exist (2,000 words)

Puzzle: Play Nomido, the Browser’s daily word game.

Napoleon And His Memorable Alpine Crossing

Barbara Basting | Swiss National Museum | 7th September 2026 | U

A painting of Napoleon crossing the 2500-metre high Great St. Bernard Pass in the Alps shows the man rearing up in triumph on his favourite horse, Marengo. This was pure visual propaganda. In 1832, Alexandre Dumas crossed the pass and wrote in his diaries about how the farmers en route had mocked the Emperor. Napoleon reportedly did the journey on “unglamorous mules” and almost fell into an abyss (1,800 words)