The fact that two balls charged with 1 coulomb each would repel/attract each other from a distance of 1 metre with a force sufficient to lift the Seawise Giant would suggest me otherwise, but has anyone ever charged an object with 1 coulomb of charge?

Why was such a ridiculously large charge chosen as the unit of charge? Or better, why did we give the Coulomb constant such a big value instead of using a value in the same order of magnitude of the Newton constant ($10^{-11}$)?