Interesting Facts about Tomatoes

A tomato is 94% water.

The tomato was put "on trial" on September 25, 1820 in Salem, New Jersey. In front of a courthouse, Robert Johnson ate a basket of tomatoes to prove they were not poisonous. The crowd waited for him to keel over dead. He never did.

In 1887, the tomato reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling? Vegetable. So speaking legally, tomato is a vegetable.(Though technically a tomato is a fruit but it is mostly used as a vegetable so we are putting it inder the category of vegetables.)

A tomato is called pomodoro in Italian language.

Tomatoes were first cultivated in 700 AD by Aztecs and Incas.

Tomatoes first grew as wild, cherry-size berries in the South American Andes, but the fruit, as we know it today, was developed in Mexico where it was known as tomatil and traveled to Europe by boat with the returning conquistadors.

Upon arrival in Italy, the heart-shaped tomato was considered an aphrodisiac, thus tomato in Italian, poma amoris, means "love apple."

Tomato is the world's most popular fruit. More than 60 million tons of tomatoes are produced per year.

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