Tag Archives: Wikipedia

Mattress Sizing

If you are in the market for a new mattress and may be switching mattress companies, do yourself a favor and double check the sizes of your current mattress and the one you are about to buy. It could save you a lot of time, energy, and money. Even though nearly all mattress manufacturers use the same names for sizes (e.g., King, Queen), the dimensions of those size vary dramatically. Wikipedia has a great mattress dimension chart you should consult before making your next purchase, especially if you’re switching manufacturers and/or the geographic area in which you are buying a mattress.

The Last Coffee Crisis

Coffee futures continue to rise without an end in sight, meaning we are due for our own coffee crisis (my local coffeeshop has already stopped selling two origins). Not among the many coffee crises of the past about which I did know, I just learned of one in East Germany during the late 1970s. From the decade-old-Wikipedia entry on the history of East Germany:

Due to the strong German tradition of drinking coffee, coffee imports were one of the most important for consumers. A massive rise in coffee prices in 1976/77 led to a quadrupling of the annual costs of importing coffee compared to 1972-75. This caused severe financial problems for the GDR, which perennially lacked hard currency.

As a result, in the summer of 1977 the Politburo withdrew most cheaper brands of coffee from sale, limited use in restaurants, and effectively withdrew its provision in public offices and state enterprises. In addition, an infamous new type of coffee was introduced, Mischkaffee (mixed coffee), which was 51% coffee and 49% a range of filler including chicory, rye, and sugar beet.

Unsurprisingly, the new coffee was generally detested for its awful taste, and the whole episode is informally known as the “coffee crisis”. The crisis passed after 1978 as world coffee prices began to fall again, as well as increased supply through an agreement between the GDR and Vietnam – the latter becoming one of the world’s largest coffee producers in the 1990s. However, the episode vividly illustrated the structural economic and financial problems of the GDR.

You can find more information in footnote 17 on page 15 of Hans-Werner Hess’ Collapse of a Closed Society: The End of East Germany. I have not found more solid sources or information in my quick searches thus far.