The Anti-tobacco movement in Nazi Germany was the first public anti-smoking
campaign in modern history. Anti-tobacco movements grew in many nations from
the beginning of the 20th century, but these had little success except in
Germany where the campaign was supported by the government after the Nazis
came to power. It was the most powerful anti-smoking movement in the world
in the 1930s and early 1940s. The Nazi leadership condemned smoking and
several of them openly criticized tobacco consumption. Research on smoking
and its effects on health thrived under Nazi rule and was the most important
of its type at that time. Hitler's personal distaste for tobacco and the
Nazi reproductive policies were among the motivating factors behind their
campaign against smoking, and this campaign was associated with both
antisemitism and racism. The Nazi anti-tobacco campaign included banning
smoking in trams, buses and city trains, promoting health education,
limiting cigarette rations in the Wehrmacht, organizing medical lectures for
soldiers and raising the tobacco tax. The Nazis also imposed restrictions on
tobacco advertising, tobacco rationing for women, smoking in public spaces
and regulated restaurants and coffeehouses. The anti-tobacco movement did
not have much effect in the early years of the Nazi regime and tobacco use
increased between 1933 and 1939, but smoking by military personnel declined
from 1939 to 1945.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobacco_movement_in_Nazi_Germany
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1642:
First English Civil War: The Royalist army engaged the much larger
Parliamentarian army at the Battle of Turnham Green near Turnham Green,
Middlesex.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Turnham_Green)
1954:
Great Britain defeated France at the Parc des Princes in Paris to win the
first Rugby League World Cup.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rugby_League_World_Cup)
1970:
The Bhola tropical cyclone hit the densely populated Ganges Delta in East
Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_Bhola_cyclone)
1982:
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Constitution Gardens in Washington, D.C.
was dedicated.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Veterans_Memorial)
1985:
The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupted, causing a volcanic mudslide that buried
Armero, Colombia and killed approximately 23,000 people.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevado_del_Ruiz)
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
craquelure (n) (art) The distinctive pattern of hairline cracks in the
surface of an old painting.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/craquelure)
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
These are times in which a genius would wish to live. It is not in the still
calm of life, or in the repose of a pacific station, that great characters
are formed. The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with
difficulties. Great necessities call out great virtues.
--Abigail Adams
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Abigail_Adams)