It seems the "1820 Tomato is proven nonpoisonous" is just another BS "truth" that gets posted on "this day in history" sites. How much of the other "truths" are just as ridiculous?
Here's ONE treatise about it.
"Anyway, back to our story and why June 28, 1820, is so important in tomato history: actually it isn’t. A lot of “this day in history” sites list today as the day that the tomato was proved to be non-poisonous, but the story is mostly a fable.
According to the stories, a man named Col. Robert Gibbon Johnson from Salem County, NJ, consumed a quantity of ripe tomatoes on this date before an audience, in an effort to prove to his neighbors that tomatoes were not only edible but also delicious, and worthy of commercial cultivation. Johnson was a real person (1771-1850), and was a notable figure in the region, but according to Andrew F. Smith, researching and writing for the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2000, no written records exist for such a demonstration. If such a shocking and heavily attended event was publicized and took place, certainly there would have been reports of it at the time. The story did not appear, however, until 86 years after the supposed event.
Col. Robert Gibbon Johnson As speculated by Smith, the story had appeal and took on a life of its own. An internet search brings up many versions of it, with some fantastic embellishments:
Johnson ate two pounds of tomatoes; Johnson ate a basket of tomatoes; Johnson ate a bushel of tomatoes. (If Johnson ate a bushel of tomatoes at one sitting, he would have got sick, but it wouldn’t be the fault of the tomatoes.)
Johnson ate the tomatoes in the public square; Johnson ate them in front of the courthouse; Johnson advertised in the papers that he was going to eat the tomatoes at the top of the steps of the county courthouse.
Johnson ate the tomatoes in Salem County, New Jersey, where he lived. Johnson lived in Salem, Massachusetts, and ate them on the county courthouse steps there.
fire department band Twenty doubting Salem County residents gathered to watch this suicide attempt. No, actually 2,000 gathered for this horrific display. To be more accurate, 20,000 people witnessed the blood-curdling drama. A woman in the crowd fainted at the ghastly sight of tomatoes slipping so easily, so evilly, down Johnson’s throat, and the local fire department band played a dirge.
Johnson ate the tomatoes on June 28, 1820. He ate them on June 28, 1830. He ate them on September 28, 1820. He ate them on September 28, 1846. (It seems likely that if Johnson ate any tomatoes, he ate them in September. In New Jersey or Massachusetts, tomato plants are still in the blossom stage in June, and the fruit isn’t ripe enough to eat until August and September.)"
Another version of the "poisonous" myth that I find interesting...
"The story stems from European folklore. When the tomato was first introduced, it was widely considered poisonous. Aristocrats dined on pewter; the acid in tomatoes reacted with the metal, causing lead poisoning. Peasants ate from plates made of wood and were unaffected, so tomatoes became the poor man’s food. The legend grew, as legends do, to include stories of witches using tomatoes, a member of the deadly nightshade family, to conjure werewolves. The wild tomato’s Latin genus name, Lycopersicon, translates to “Wolf Peach.”"
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