Title: 10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil - Listverse
Headings: 10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil
10 Common Things People Believed Were Invented By The Devil
10 Forks
9 Musical Instruments
8 Socialism
7 Smoking
6 The Telephone
5 Dice
4 The Smurfs
3 The Cross
2 Soccer
1 Theater

Content: The first Spaniard to actually see natives smoking were reportedly interpreter Luis de Torres and seaman Rodrigo de Jerez, who soon took up the habit himself. In 1498, Jerez took six crates of tobacco leaves back to Barcelona, but his habit of breathing smoke alarmed the locals, who suspected the Devil was at work. Jerez was then arrested by the Inquisition and spent the next several years in prison. King James I considered tobacco an invention of the Devil, writing a screed called “A Counterblaste to Tobacco,” calling it a disgusting habit of godless savages and worse—of Frenchmen and Spaniards. Smoking was considered a deadly sin in Russia and the Middle East, and Pope Clement VIII threatened anyone smoking in a holy place with excommunication. 6 The Telephone
Writer Ambrose Bierce once defined the telephone as “an invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.” He was being satirical, but when the telephone was invented, there were many who viewed it with suspicion and suspected a diabolical origin. When the telephone was first introduced in Sweden, many rural folks feared it was magical and that telephone wires would attract lightning or evil spirits. Preachers outright decried the telephone as an instrument of the Devil, and lines were often pulled down or sabotaged by irate farmers. The Amish and Old Order Mennonites of Pennsylvania had a similar view.