When it's all beers and skittles

The following text is originally lifted from the trivia section of The Jakarta Post dated Friday, 22 February 2008.

~Compiled from various sources~

• Beer, as all alcoholic drinks, is made by fermentation caused by bacteria feeding on the yeast cells, then defecating. This bacterial excrement is called alcohol.
• In 1962, Iron City beer was the brand used to test market the concept of tab opening aluminium cans. By 1970, over 90% of all beer cans were self-opening.
• Centuries ago in England, pub visitors used a novel innovation that enabled them to get their beer served quickly. They used mugs with a whistle baked into the rim, the whistle being used to summon the barmaid. It has been suggested this practice gave birth to the phrase "wet your whistle".
• During the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance, beer was often a nutritional necessity and was sometimes used in a medicinal setting. It could be flavoured with almost anything, from the bark of fir trees to fresh eggs and thyme. Everyone drank beer, including children.
• Most saloons were owned by the breweries by the 1900s. The bartenders earned US$10 to $15 per week, with Sunday bringing in the most business.
• Beer was not sold in bottles until 1850; it was not sold in cans until 1935.
• Pennsylvania outlawed free lunches in 1917 to prevent taverns from giving free sandwiches to customers who bought beer to drink with them. This led some shopkeepers to sell sandwiches and give away the beer.
• President Theodore Roosevelt took more than 500 gallons of beer with him on an African safari.
• The world's strongest beer is Samuel Adam's Triple Bock, which has reached 16% alcohol by volume. To obtain this level, however, they had to use a champagne yeast.
• There is an Egyptian beer, called bousa, that is brewed from millet and has been a favourite drink of many for over 3,000 years. Modern Ethiopia has a version made from wheat.
• One brand of Chinese beer reportedly includes in its recipe "ground-up dog parts".
• Germany serves beer ice cream in ice lolly form. Its alcoholic content is less than that found in "classic" beer.
• A beer lover is called a cerevisaphile.
• A labeorphilist is a collector of beer bottles.
• In Bangladesh, $5 will buy a beer or a first-class train ticket for a cross-country trip.
• In the mid 1970s, Australians were the third biggest drinkers in the world (behind Germany and Belgium). Now they don't even get into the top 10.
• If a young Tiriki man offers beer to a woman and she spits some of it into his mouth, they are engaged to be married.
• Among the Bagonda people of Uganda, the several widows of a recently deceased king have the distinctive honour of drinking the beer in which his entrails have been cleaned.
• The Chagga people of Tanganyika believe that a liar will be poisoned if he or she consumes beer mixed with the blood of a recently sacrificed goat.
• Beer is mixed with saliva and blood for a drink that is shared when two Chagga men become blood brothers.