THIS is Alcohol Awareness Week, focusing on “The Impact of Alcohol on Health and Society”.

1. When it first appeared in English in the 1540s “alcohol” was a fine powder produced by grinding.

2. In the 17th century it was a black powder made of antimony sulphide or lead sulphide used as eye make-up.

3. Its meaning changed from powders produced by distillation to the liquids produced by distillation.

4. Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary in 1755 defined alcohol as “An Arabick term used by chymists for a high rectified dephlegmated spirit of wine”.

5. Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary defines alcohol as: “(Arabic al kohl, a paint for the eyes.) The essential principle of all such liquids as give a man a black eye.”

6. Recent research has shown that people with blue eyes have higher alcohol tolerance.

7. According to parliamentary rules, the Chancellor may drink alcohol during a Budget speech. Otherwise alcoholic drinks are forbidden.

8. One unit of alcohol is the amount the body can process in an hour.

9. The first drunken driving arrest was of London taxi driver George Smith on September 10, 1897.

10. “Alcohol is the anaesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

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