[2] The ice cools the gin, dulling the effect of the alcohol in the mouth and making the drink more pleasant and refreshing to taste.
[4] In some parts of the world (e.g., in Germany, Italy, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Turkey), it is called a gin tonic (Japanese: ジン・トニック, Hepburn: jin tonikku).
[11] The use of such a glass, with plenty of ice and a garnish tailored to the flavours of the gin, is sometimes said to allow the aromas of the drink to gather at its opening for the drinker to more easily appreciate.
[17] The cocktail was created by officers of the Presidency armies, the military force of the East India Company which operated on the Indian subcontinent.
[22] A 2004 study found that after 12 hours, "considerable quantities (500 to 1,000 ml) of tonic water may, for a short period of time, lead to quinine plasma levels at the lower limit of therapeutic efficacy and may, in fact, cause transitory suppression of parasites".
[31] The trans-galactic nature of the gin and tonic is imagined in Douglas Adams's novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, which describes how "85% of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonnyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand or more variations on the same phonetic theme.
The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian 'chinanto/mnigs' which is ordinary water served at slightly above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks' which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that the names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds."
In Top Gear and The Grand Tour, Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond were known to be quite fond of the drink, and drank them on camera a number of times, in one case causing controversy when Jeremy Clarkson appeared to drink one whilst behind the wheel of a car driving to the North Pole.