{"id":3426,"date":"2024-07-07T09:24:00","date_gmt":"2024-07-07T08:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/culturalcalendar\/?p=3426"},"modified":"2024-05-09T16:32:25","modified_gmt":"2024-05-09T15:32:25","slug":"world-chocolate-day-7-july-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/culturalcalendar\/2024\/07\/07\/world-chocolate-day-7-july-3\/","title":{"rendered":"World Chocolate Day 7 July"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The history of chocolate goes back about 2500 years. The Aztecs loved their newly-discovered liquid chocolate so much that they believed the god of wisdom, Quetzalcoatl, literally bestowed it upon them. Cocoa seeds even acted as a form of currency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many present day chocolate companies began operations in the 19th<\/sup> and early 20th<\/sup> centuries, with Cadbury beginning in 1868, Nestl\u00e9 in 1875, in 1895 Milton Hershey started selling the Hershey bar, making chocolate affordable for the average person and the first Mars bars were made in 1932.<\/p>\n\n\n

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World Chocolate day was first celebrated back in 2009. The date July 7th was specifically chosen because it was on this day in the year 1550 that chocolate arrived in Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chocolate comes from the seeds of the Theobroma cacao tree, an exotic tree that\u2019s been cultivated for over three millennia in Central America, Northern South America and Mexico. It was first cultivated over 4000 years ago in Mesoamerica (modern-day Mexico) and was used by the Olmec, one of the most ancient civilizations in Latin America. They are thought to have been the first to turn the cocoa plant into a bitter chocolate drink, and they used it in rituals and for medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Here\u2019s a few fun facts about chocolate<\/p>\n\n\n\n