World No Tobacco Day is observed on May 31. This year’s theme is “Tobacco and heart disease”. Tobacco causes cardiovascular disease, including stroke, which is the world’s leading cause of death. Let’s delve into no-smoking zone and glimpse into some interesting stories about tobacco and smoking.
He was a Spanish crewmen who sailed to the Americas along with Christopher Columbus. He is credited as the first European smoker. He introduced it to his native town and the Spanish Inquisition imprisoned him for his “infernal” habits, because “only Devil could give a man the power to exhale smoke from his mouth”. Identify.
Some of the world’s biggest tobacco firms researched this lethal radioactive substance to be present in cigarettes for over 40-years but never published the results and kept quiet. It is also the substance that poisoned the Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. Identify.
In 1925, Hungarian inventor Boris Aivaz patented the process of making something from a crepe paper. They were considered “safer” and by the 1960s, they dominated the cigar market. Production of the new addition rose tremendously. What did he add?
This two-year-old boy from Indonesia shot to fame in 2010 and became the international sensation but the issue of concern was that he was discovered puffing 40 cigarettes a day while riding his tricycle. Now, at 10 years, he has managed to keep away from cigarettes, lose weight and excel at school. Identify.
The Brown and Williamson Tobacco Corporation, a subsidiary of the London-based British-American company in the 1960’s developed a special type of cigars. The idea was to heat the tobacco rather than burn it, thus avoiding hazardous substances in tobacco smoke. What was it code named?
Answers:
1. Rodrigo de Jerez
2. Polonium-210 (Discovered by Marie Curie)
3. Cigarette filter
4. Aldi Rizal
5. Ariel
