Amen to the dangers of smoking! In fairness, though, my mom (who is 73 this year) remembers reading information (diguised as medical advice) that smoking was good for your T-zone (basically the throat and windpipes). Wayne might have genuinely believed he was starting a healthy habit, and it's much harder to quit than to start.

We have a holiday named after him because the Knights of Columbus saw what St. Patrick's day did for Irish Americans, and they used the campaign to get the Federal holiday as an exercise in showing the voting clout and importance of Italian Americans in the politics of the time, in a day when many politicians tended to be focussed almost exclusively on the WASP vote.