The First Soda Straw...!

So often we take thinks for granted just because we consider them to be so common.

Take the simple straw for instance. Been around a long time, right? Turns out that it's been around a lot longer than you might believe!

First Drinking Straw Was Made Of Gold

Photo credit: Sumerian Shakespeare

Drinking straws aren’t one of those things you imagine coming hand in hand with the dawn of civilization. But the cheap plastic bending tubes you use to keep your clumsy kid from spilling have been around since the world’s first empire—although back then, they were a lot fancier.

The oldest drinking straw was found in a 5,000-year-old tomb and was made out of gold encrusted with precious blue stones. The owner was so proud of his straw that he even put a seal in his tomb that showed him using it to drink out of a jar, lest anyone forget that he liked to sip drinks with his sippy straw.

There’s a reason. Sumerians used straws to drink beer, which was as thick as porridge in those days. That might sound disgusting, but Sumerians considered beer to be a gift from the gods. So using a gold straw was just giving beer the respect it deserved.
I told ya the straw had been around for a long time. Even I didn't know just how long it's been until I read this article from Listverse.

Coffee out on the patio today!