Coffee is a powerful drink. On a personal level, it helps keep us awake and active. On a much general level, it has helped shape our history and continues to shape our culture, Coffee plants grow wild in parts of Africa and were probably used by travelling tribes (部落)for thousands of years, but it wasn't until the 1400s that people figured out they could roast its seeds. By the 1500s, the drink had spread to coffeehouses across the Arab world. It is often said that after the Boston Tea Party of 1773, when American colonists (殖民者) attacked British tea ships and threw large boxes of tea into the harbor, Americans everywhere switched over to drinking coffee.