Pianist Victor Borge was once asked why the keys on his piano were so yellow. Borge insisted that, notwithstanding the evidence, the piano was not very old. His explanation? "The elephant," he declared, "smoked too much."

[In 1535, French explorer Jacques Cartier observed Iroquoi indians chewing tobacco along the St. Lawrence River. "When we tried to use it," Cartier wrote, "we found it bit our tongues like pepper." Explorers soon brought the plant back to Europe, where it was billed as a panacea for everything from gonorrhea to flatulence. It was even promoted as a dentifrice -- to whiten teeth!]