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Here’sna delightful story: In 1820 Jamaican-born U.S. Colonel Robert GibbonnJohnson convinced a skeptical crowd in New Jersey that tomatoes arennot poisonous, after all, by eating an entire basket of them.
Here’sna delightful story: In 1820 Jamaican-born U.S. Colonel Robert GibbonnJohnson convinced a skeptical crowd in New Jersey that tomatoes arennot poisonous, after all, by eating an entire basket of them.n
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nHisndoctor warned him that he would foam and froth at the mouth andndouble over with appendicitis. Many in the cheering crowd thoughtnthat the colonel was a fool—that he was committing publicnsuicide—after all, everyone knows that tomatoes are poisonous, justnsmell their leaves! The crowd grew and grew, as crowds often do, asnthe colonel kept eating more and more tomatoes, and eventually 2,000npeople had gathered around him as he stood there eating tomatoes onnthe steps of the Salem Courthouse.
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nAndnof course, Johnson lived! The people were amazed!!! Tomatoes werenproved to be edible, after all!
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nHere’snthe thing about the story: it almost certainly did not happen.
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nColonelnJohnson was a prominent citizen of Salem County, New Jersey, andnstuff was written about him during his life—but nobody wrote aboutnthis story at the time. Some 68 years after the supposed event,nsomeone wrote that Johnson ate a tomato in 1820. (That might havenoccurred, who knows? I ate a tomato two days ago. These thingsnhappen.) Somehow all the details of the story, including a specificndate and location and even a quote or two, emerged from someone,nsomewhere, and were added to the story, and it was even dramatized asntrue on the national radio show “You Are There.” The story wasnnot just printed, but reprinted and quoted and referenced over andnover again—even in newspapers and scholarly journals. I’m sure thatnpeople who passed on the story believed it was true.
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nButnhistorians are almost positive it didn’t happen—because, if it did,nthere would’ve been a full report (or two, or more) in the days justnafter it happened. Colorful events don’t go unmentioned for decades,nand then get reported as being simple and plain and then get reportednin more and more elaborate and colorful ways as the years pass—butnthat’ s exactly what happens with legends.
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nWait!nTomatoes? Poisonous?
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Here’snone reason that such a legend is often believed: many people in manynplaces and times have believed that the fruit of a tomato plant,nalthough beautiful in its smooth yellow or red skin, is poisonous.nHere is the true history of tomatoes:
Here’snone reason that such a legend is often believed: many people in manynplaces and times have believed that the fruit of a tomato plant,nalthough beautiful in its smooth yellow or red skin, is poisonous.nHere is the true history of tomatoes:n
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nTomatoesnwere a New-World food first brought to Europe and the rest of the OldnWorld after Cortez conquered the Aztecs in Mexico in the earlynSixteenth Century (that is, the early 1500s). Apparently somenpopulations were early acceptors of the tomato as food; other groupsngrew the plant for tomatoes’ ornamental value and thought the fruitnto be poisonous. Names for the fruit included pomodoron(Italian for “golden apple”), pomme d’amour (French forn“love apple”) and of course the English tomato, which camenfrom the Aztec word tomatl.nThe British, and therefore the British colonists in North America,nwere holdouts and didn’t include tomatoes into their diets until thenEighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1700s). We know that ThomasnJefferson grew tomatoes, and his daughters left many recipes thatninvolved tomatoes, so his family saw them as food at least by 1782. n
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nItnwasn’t until after America’s Civil War that tomatoes took off innpopularity in the U.S. (in the second half of the 1800s). Whethernmost or just some Americans thought they were poisonous in 1820, bynthe late 1890s, tomatoes were being enthusiastically used in soups,nsalads, and sauces, without any cautions or reservations.
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nAlsonon this date:
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Scientist Alexis Carrel’s birthday
Scientist Alexis Carrel’s birthday n
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nConstitution Day in Ukraine
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