The Tea Page features a timeline which extends from 2000 BC, when tea was grown in India, to 1953 AD when the play Tea and Sympathy (starring Deborah Kerr) was performed at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theater. 

Points of interest along the timeline also include the year 222 when tea was “mentioned as a substitute for wine for the first time in Chinese writings.” And, how in 805, tea was “introduced to Japan as a medicine.” Not to forget our British friends, there’s even a spot in the history for 1597 when the first English mention of tea appears.

For more detailed accounts in tea’s history, view these Bigelow posts: The Japanese Tea Ceremony, How Tea Got to England (Parts I and II), How Russia was Introduced to Tea (Parts II and III), and the History of Iced Tea in America.