Q 01/05

Charred seeds in an ancient desert hearth show people in North America were using tobacco roughly how long ago?

A) 300 years

B) 1,000 years

C) 3,500 years

D) 12,000 years

Answer · why

D) 12,000 years

12,000 years. The find, dated to about 12,300 years ago, pushed the record of tobacco use back by some 9,000 years, to a time when mammoths still roam...

Q 02/05

Rodrigo de Jerez, credited as Europe's first smoker, picked up the habit in Cuba while sailing with which explorer?

A) Christopher Columbus

B) Ferdinand Magellan

C) Hernán Cortés

D) Vasco da Gama

Answer · why

A) Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus. He sent Jerez and an interpreter inland in November 1492, and they came back describing people who burned dried leaves and breat...

Q 03/05

Under which monarch did the English take up smoking, which they at first called 'drinking' tobacco?

A) Henry VIII

B) Elizabeth I

C) Charles II

D) Victoria

Answer · why

B) Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I. Colonists rescued from Roanoke came home in 1586 with the habit, and for years it was 'drunk': 'smoke' in that sense is first recorded on...

Q 04/05

Which French ambassador to Portugal sent tobacco to the French court around 1560, promoting it as a medicine?

A) Jacques Cartier

B) Jean Nicot

C) Nicolas Fouquet

D) Jean-Baptiste Colbert

Answer · why

B) Jean Nicot

Jean Nicot. The court took to it after he reportedly used it on Catherine de' Medici's migraines; botanists then named the plant Nicotiana after him, ...

Q 05/05

Which English king wrote 'A Counterblaste to Tobacco' in 1604?

A) Henry VIII

B) James I

C) Charles I

D) George III

Answer · why

B) James I

James I. He called smoking 'a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs', and likened its fumes t...