As any other industry, tobacco industry has developed a history of its own, with its paradoxical, strange, and interesting facts. Most of these facts are related to very specific situations and discussing them outside their original context may be futile. However, there are cases that are worth mentioning, irrespective of their reference. Here are the most striking realities in the history of modern cigarettes:

• Kent, Camel, Marlboro, and Kool (all of them American brands) own roughly over 65% of the global common cigarettes market.
• The invention of the cork tip filter, generally associated to Viceroy, should be actually attributed to the Hungarian inventor Boris Aivaz.
• Some high-end brands, like Sobranie and Davidoff, also sell common cigarettes, in an effort to make the brand more accessible to the average customer.
• There are more than 4000 different ingredients in a common cigarette.
• Apart from tar and nicotine, smoking light or ultra light cigarettes is not less damaging than smoking regular cigarettes. On the contrary, there are cases when light cigarettes prove to be more hazardous due to the substances used to extract the nicotine out of the tobacco leaves.
• Menthol is by far the most important fragrance associated to tobacco and it is also one of the first to be introduced in common cigarettes worldwide.
• Color codes associated to cigarettes are quite common, but they only apply to average varieties. Cigars and special brands ignore them completely.
• Statistically, nicotine is the world's most addictive substance. However, one should remark that there are many substances much more addictive than nicotine, but they are not sold in every city on the planet...
• During the WW I and WW II, tobacco was included in the rations of the soldiers, even if it was known to produce fatigue in the long run. The idea was that a soldier smoking a cigarette was more lucid than a smoker soldier lacking cigarettes.