Sept. 29 is National Coffee Day, and today more then 150 million Americans will have a cup of coffee. Most of it is consumed in the morning, probably while you're reading this article. Whether it's iced, piping hot with a touch of sugar or in mocha latte form, statistics show Americans will consume 3.1 cups today. Worldwide that's about 400 billion cups each year. Coffee is second only to oil as a world commodity.

International Coffee Day is coming on Oct. 1 Why? Coffee barons from all over the world decided that's the date they wanted, but National Coffee Day is still Sept. 29 here in the United States. But it's also National Coffee Day in Mexico, Norway, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, Japan, Austria, Romania, Philippines and Taiwan.

About 50 countries produce coffee, but no one produces more than Brazil, followed by Colombia. They are the two world leaders.

We used to call my grandfather's brew 10-W-40, because it had the consistency of motor oil. Too thick to drink, but too thin to plow. Black and acrid. It would hit your stomach and explode, and 20 minutes later you were walking a foot off the ground.

That's where I get my penchant for strong coffee. Try as I might I just can't seem to duplicate Grandpappy's brew, but if I boil it a couple of days, throw in some cigarette butts and add some lighter fluid, it comes close.

Coffee is ingrained in the minds of people. It's its own color. It's a flavor. It's a cake. Heck it's even a barbecue sauce. C8H10N4O2 is the official caffeine molecule. Caffeine is what gives coffee its kick and makes us crave it.

It also goes by a host of names: Joe, Dirt, Mud, Java, Brew, Cuppa-Cuppa, Go Juice, Jitter Juice, Bean Juice, Bug Juice, Brain Juice, Wakey-Wakey Juice, Morning Jolt, Morning Buzz, Liquid Crack, Liquid Energy, Caffeine Fix, Caffeine Infusion, Cuppa Lightning, Leaded or Unleaded, High Octane and Rocket Fuel. There's probably more, or you're welcome to use one of these.

Here's some interesting Java facts while you work on that second cup of coffee.

• COFFEE WAS ORIGINALLY CHEWED. Sipping may be your preferred method of java consumption, but coffee has not always been a liquid treat. According to a number of historians, the first African tribes to consume coffee did so by grinding the berries together, adding in some animal fat, and rolling these caffeinated treats into tiny edible energy balls.

• INSTANT COFFEE HAS BEEN AROUND FOR NEARLY 250 YEARS. Instant coffee made its first appearance in England in 1771. But it would take another 139 years for the first mass-produced instant coffee to be introduced (and patented) in the U.S. in 1910.

• THE AVERAGE AMERICAN SPENDS MORE THAN $1,000 ON COFFEE EACH YEAR. You'd think that spending an average of $1,092 on coffee each year would be enough to make America the world's most caffeinated nation. You would be wrong.

• FINLAND IS THE WORLD'S COFFEE CAPITAL. Though Finland does not produce any beans of its own, its citizens drink a lot of the brown stuff — the most of any country in the world.

• THERE HAVE BEEN SEVERAL ATTEMPTS TO BAN THE BEVERAGE ENTIRELY. As recently as the 18th century, governments were trying to eradicate coffee. Among the many reasons for outlawing the beverage was its tendency to stimulate "radical thinking."

• 17TH-CENTURY WOMEN THOUGHT IT WAS TURNING THEIR MEN INTO "USELESS CORPSES." In 1674, the Women's Petition Against Coffee claimed the beverage was turning British men into "useless corpses" and proposed a ban on it for anyone under the age of 60.

• THE FIRST WEBCAM WATCHED A COFFEE POT. Though it was hardly what one might described as "action-packed," it allowed researchers at Cambridge to monitor the coffee situation in the Trojan Room without ever leaving their desks. After the webcam portion of the Trojan Room coffee pot experiment was pulled, the pot itself — a non-working Krups ProAroma pot that would normally retail for about $50 — was put up for auction on eBay, where it sold for just under $5,000.

• HOW MUCH COFFEE WOULD IT TAKE TO KILL ME? Too much of anything can be a bad thing. It would take 70 cups of coffee to kill a roughly 150 pound person.

If you're a coffee drinker, today is your day. Embrace it, drink it and thank an Ethiopian goat herder who many centuries ago saw his herd busily going from bush to bush to consume the fruit on the branches.

Curious, he tried it and the love of coffee was born, but it wasn't until he asked some Monks to try it and they threw the cherries in the fire and then mixed it with water that things got really serious.

So have another cup and don't worry about it. You've still got .1 cups to go to make your quota for the day.