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Crown bans English-grown tobacco; Virginia alone may supply the kingdom

A royal license costs 15 pounds a year to sell it, and no leaf may enter England from any colony but Virginia.

By 1620, tobacco had traveled from the Caribbean to the courts of Europe and back again — despised by the king, beloved by nearly everyone else. The English crown banned tobacco cultivation in England that year, closing off any domestic competition and handing the Virginia Company exclusive rights to supply the market. In exchange, The monopoly required that no tobacco could be imported except from Virginia, and a royal license costing 15 pounds per year was required to sell it. — a tidy arrangement that turned a weed into state policy. The deal locked Virginia's identity to a single crop for generations to come…

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More from June 29

Gaetjens heads it in; the US beats England, 1–0, in Belo Horizonte

Borghi shuts out the sport's reigning aristocracy; the American squad includes a hearse driver, a schoolteacher, and men who trained together exactly once.

Eisenhower signs the highway act; 41,000 miles of interstate and $25 billion set in motion

The president who crossed the country on rutted Army roads in 1919 authorizes the largest public works project the nation has yet attempted.

Apple's iPhone goes on sale; thousands who camped for days outside stores are first in line

Jobs unveiled the 3.5-inch touchscreen device in January as "an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator" in one, and today the wait ends at Apple and AT&T stores nationwide.

Wilson walks through a row of Boy Scouts to address the men in a tent pitched on the same ground where fifty thousand fell; most, it seems, have made their peace.

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More from Colonial America

White comes home to Roanoke and finds it empty; the houses are taken down

He lands on his granddaughter's third birthday and finds only a carved word where his colony used to be.

George III declares the colonies in "open and avowed rebellion"

The proclamation lands weeks after Congress asked the king to intervene, not crack down.

Redcoats empty the Charlestown powder house before dawn

Word of the raid spreads wrong and fast, and thousands of militiamen are on the road before anyone confirms a shot was fired.

Delegates from twelve colonies gather at Carpenters' Hall; Georgia stays home

Peyton Randolph takes the chair as Philadelphia hosts the first colony-wide answer to Parliament's Intolerable Acts.

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