49 Fun Facts About Cigarette

The word "cigarette" entered English from which language?

French speakers coined cigarette, a diminutive of cigare meaning 'little cigar', as Spain's paper-rolled smokes spread north, and English borrowed the word whole.

British soldiers picked up the cigarette habit from Ottoman comrades during which war?

The Crimean War sent British troops home rolling tobacco in paper as their Turkish allies did, and veteran Robert Gloag opened Britain's first cigarette factory in 1856.

Which civilisation carved a cigar-smoking god on a temple doorway at Palenque more than a thousand years ago?

The Maya carved the aged deity scholars call God L puffing a large cigar; conquistadors later took rolled tobacco home to Spain, where paper wrappers followed.

By what grim nickname were cigarettes already known in the late 19th century?

Coffin nails was in print by the 1880s, some seventy years before the 1950 studies that first drew wide attention to smoking and lung cancer.

What spurred James Bonsack to build his cigarette-rolling machine around 1880?

A prize offer from the Richmond firm Allen & Ginter set him to work, yet the firm held back from using his machine and lost out to rival James Buchanan Duke, who embraced it.

Which trust, formed by James Buchanan Duke in 1890, came to dominate almost the entire US cigarette trade?

American Tobacco grew so dominant that antitrust action broke it up in 1911, creating rivals such as Liggett & Myers and Lorillard.

Which US general said his army needed "tobacco as much as bullets"?

Pershing made the plea as America's commander in World War I and got his wish: cigarettes went into soldiers' rations and stayed there until 1975.

In 2004, which Asian kingdom became the first country in the world to ban the sale of tobacco?

Bhutan gave up the ban in 2021, when its parliament legalised sales again to stop smugglers crossing a border closed against the coronavirus.

Marlboro's early red "beauty tip" was designed to hide what?

Lipstick stains vanished against the red tip of a brand first sold to women as "Mild as May"; it was only recast as a man's smoke in the 1950s.

Marlboro takes its name from Great Marlborough Street, site of Philip Morris's original factory, in which city?

London tobacconist Philip Morris kept a shop on Bond Street, so the brand that came to stand for the American West began as a British name.

Which Western's theme became the music of Marlboro's 1960s television ads?

The Magnificent Seven lent the brand Elmer Bernstein's galloping theme, and years of commercials made the film music a trademark of the Old West.

Which Chicago adman conceived the Marlboro Man in 1954?

Leo Burnett's campaign turned a minor cigarette with a feminine image into a major brand with a rugged male one.

What grim nickname do smokers give Marlboro Reds, the cigarette of the Marlboro Man?

Cowboy killers is said to have stuck as models from the ads died of smoking-related disease; one, Wayne McLaren, spent his last two years campaigning against cigarettes, even at Philip Morris's 1992 shareholder meeting.

Which picture magazine's 1949 portrait of a weathered Texas cowboy inspired the Marlboro Man?

Life ran its portrait of ranch foreman Clarence Hailey Long in 1949, and the ads it inspired turned a minor cigarette into a major brand.

Which slogan did Lucky Strike coin to promote the way its tobacco was processed?

It's Toasted boasted that the tobacco was heat-dried rather than sun-dried, and rival Camel hit back with ads promising cigarettes "never parched or toasted".

Which tobacco baron launched Camel in 1913?

R. J. Reynolds brought it out two years after the break-up of the industry's monopoly set his firm free, and Camel became the country's most popular cigarette.

The camel on the original Camel pack was photographed at which travelling show?

Barnum & Bailey Circus supplied the model in 1913: its dromedary, Old Joe, was photographed for the pack, and the cartoon mascot of the 1980s was called Old Joe too.

In 1946, Camel ads began claiming that more members of which profession smoked the brand than any other cigarette?

Doctors were polled by the ad agency's own staff, often moments after being handed free Camels, so the survey behind the slogan was stacked from the start.

A 1991 study found six-year-olds recognised Joe Camel about as readily as which cartoon star's logo?

Mickey Mouse's Disney Channel logo was the yardstick: 91 percent of the six-year-olds matched Joe Camel to cigarettes, and his maker retired him the year federal regulators charged that he targeted children.

Which 1999 film tells how tobacco executive Jeffrey Wigand blew the whistle on his industry on 60 Minutes?

The Insider casts Russell Crowe as Wigand, who went from research chief at Brown & Williamson to teaching science at a Louisville high school.

Kent's Micronite filter, promoted in the 1950s as the safer way to smoke, was made with what?

Blue asbestos, the type known as crocidolite, went into some 13 billion Kents before Lorillard changed the filter; mesothelioma lawsuits followed decades later.

Indonesia's kretek cigarettes get their crackle and their scent from tobacco blended with which spice?

Cloves crackle as they burn; the story goes that a man in the Indonesian town of Kudus first added them to his tobacco to ease his asthma.

Which cigarette brand sponsored The Flintstones from 1960 to 1962, with Fred lighting up for Wilma?

Winston had Fred sing its jingle, "tastes good like a cigarette should", a line that set off a long public row with purists who insisted on "as a cigarette should".

The last cigarette commercial on US television, on January 1, 1971, was for which brand?

Virginia Slims took the final slot, one minute before midnight on The Tonight Show, its "You've come a long way, baby" pitch running out the clock on televised tobacco ads.

Which US president signed the act that banned cigarette advertising on American radio and television?

Richard Nixon signed it on April 1, 1970, and the same law hardened the warning on every pack from "may be hazardous" to "is dangerous to your health".

Why was the US Surgeon General's landmark 1964 smoking report released on a Saturday?

Markets were closed, so Luther Terry's report could not jolt share prices that day; it still hit the country, he recalled, "like a bombshell" and was front-page news.

What did Ohio's Lloyd "Spud" Hughes add to tobacco in the 1920s to create a new kind of cigarette?

Menthol cigarettes began with his Spud brand, which was pitched like a cold remedy: "When your throat is irritated, change to Spuds."

Which animal, later named Willie, was the mascot of Kool cigarettes from the 1930s?

Penguin was the brand's first name: when it gave way to Kool, the bird stayed on as mascot.

The 1998 Master Settlement Agreement with US tobacco firms funded which youth anti-smoking campaign?

Truth went national in 2000 under a foundation the settlement set up, and researchers credited it with about a fifth of the fall in teenage smoking by 2002.

Jean Nicot, the diplomat behind the word nicotine, sent tobacco home to France in 1560 from which port city?

Lisbon was where Nicot, France's ambassador, was shown the plant; he sent it to the royal court praising its healing powers, and snuff became a court fashion.

Which naturalist named the tobacco genus Nicotiana after Jean Nicot?

Carl Linnaeus fixed the name in 1753, and when chemists isolated the leaf's active ingredient in 1828 they called it nicotine after his genus.

Nicotine, first isolated from tobacco leaves in 1828, was long sold to farmers and gardeners as what?

Insecticide: tobacco extracts were killing crop pests by 1690, and today's neonicotinoid sprays are chemical cousins named after nicotine.

Which English monarch wrote the early 17th-century pamphlet A Counterblaste to Tobacco?

James I wrote in 1604 that smoking was "loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose", yet within a decade his colony of Virginia was shipping home the tobacco that steadied its finances.

Which English colonist was the first to grow tobacco as a successful export crop in Virginia?

John Rolfe found Virginia's native leaf too bitter for English tastes, so he planted sweeter seed from the Caribbean; he later married Pocahontas.

Cigarette cards were originally slipped in with the cigarettes for what practical purpose?

To stiffen the packaging and shield the cigarettes, makers slipped a card into each paper pack; printed with pictures from 1875, the stiffeners became collectables.

Which baseball star had his cigarette card pulled from packs around 1909, turning the few survivors into collectors' treasures?

Honus Wagner had the card withdrawn, by one account because he did not want it to tempt children to smoke, and the shortage made it the hobby's great prize.

Under US federal law, a pack must contain at least how many cigarettes?

20 is the legal floor: a federal rule bans any pack holding fewer, shutting out the cheap small "kiddie packs" that are easiest for children to afford.

Which war saw Zippo's entire output go to US troops?

World War II took every Zippo made once America joined the fight, and wartime metal shortages meant the lighters were steel with a black crackle finish.

Which promise has Zippo made for every lighter since the 1930s?

Free lifetime repairs, sold as "It works or we fix it free", have backed the lighter since founder George Blaisdell rebuilt a clumsy Austrian windproof model into the first Zippo.

Which country was the first to require plain, logo-free cigarette packaging, from December 2012?

Australia chose a drab green-brown, Pantone 448 C, because research found it the least appealing colour of all, and tobacco firms lost their High Court challenge to the law in 2012.

In 2004, which country became the first in the world to ban smoking in every indoor workplace, pubs included?

Ireland's publicans led the fight against the ban, yet within a year smoking inside bars and pubs had all but vanished.

Which country passed a 2022 law banning tobacco sales to anyone born after 2008, then repealed it in 2024?

New Zealand's ban, written for everyone born from 2009 onwards, never took effect: the coalition government elected in 2023 repealed it early the next year.

Which 1930s regime ran the strongest anti-smoking campaign of its day, spurred on by a dictator who loathed tobacco?

Nazi Germany's scientists tied smoking to lung cancer in studies of 1939 and 1943, yet their work was so little known abroad that the link had to be found again in 1950.

By the World Health Organization's count, which country is home to nearly a third of the world's smokers?

China has more than 300 million smokers, and nearly all their cigarettes come from a state-owned monopoly, so the government profits from the habit it is trying to curb.

By one early Spanish account, the Taíno word behind "tobacco" named not the plant but what?

A pipe for inhaling smoke is what the chronicler Oviedo reported; Las Casas wrote instead that the word meant a roll of the leaves, and scholars now lean his way.

Which packaging innovation did Marlboro introduce with its 1950s relaunch?

The flip-top box was built sturdy to keep cigarettes from being crushed, a job it did better than the soft packs then in general use.

Which screen star's cigarette, forever dangling from his lip, inspired a slang verb for hogging a shared smoke?

Humphrey Bogart's dangling cigarette made "to bogart" 1960s slang for holding on to a shared smoke, and a 1968 song using it reached cinemas on the soundtrack of Easy Rider.

By tradition, the beggars of 16th-century Seville rolled the first paper-wrapped smokes out of what?

Discarded cigar butts were shredded and rolled in scraps of paper, a poor man's smoke that took two centuries to become respectable.

A 2024 study in the journal Addiction estimated that each cigarette shortens a smoker's lifespan by roughly how much?

Twenty minutes per cigarette nearly doubles the eleven minutes a BMJ paper calculated in 2000, which means a pack-a-day habit now costs a smoker almost seven hours every day.