Trivia Fact of the Month

I have been meaning to include in my blog postings, interesting but trivial points of interest. Today I submit what may well be the winner of the trivial fact of the year award.

Question: Do you know where the term "cup of Joe" comes from?

While reading "FDR" by Jean Edward Smith, a marvelous biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt, I came across the answer to that question. If you look at the footnote on page 500 of that book you'll find the history of this term. As our true North Carolina historians will remember, Josephus Daniels, of N&O fame, was Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of the Navy. FDR was Daniel's assistant. (Daniels was far more of an important national political figure than I had ever realized.)

Daniels who did not consume alcoholic beverages, removed alcohol from Navy wardrooms in 1914. As a result coffee became known in the Navy as a "cup of Joe", an obviously derisive term resulting from Daniel's prohibition of alcohol. And so, as Paul Harvey would say, now you know the rest of the story.