We all know coffee powers us. Now, it’s helping to power the planet. Thankfully, it can no longer get you executed.

Starting with that last part, NPR’s Adam Cole just recounted the history of coffee prohibition, including 17th-century Ottoman ruler Sultan Murad IV’s habit of walking around Istanbul dressed as a commoner so he could personally decapitate coffee drinkers with his hundred-pound broadsword.

Murad apparently thought coffee would inspire indecent behavior. Other rulers also banned the drink out of fear it would roil the populace.

In 17th-century England, however, wives reportedly complained that coffee sapped their husbands’ ability to be suitably indecent with them.

Flash forward to 21st-century North Dakota, where the Energy & Environmental Research Center at the University of North Dakota is leading a project to turn coffee-processing waste into energy.

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