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The Best Thing · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
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  Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
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  Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
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  Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
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  Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Some called him brave, others thought he was
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  Speaker 1: willfully ignorant, and most just thought he was mad. Colonel
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  Speaker 1: Robert Johnson didn't care, though. He had a point to
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  Speaker 1: prove and would not be dissuaded. That's why, on September
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  Speaker 1: Johnson set out to do one of the most dangerous
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  Speaker 1: activities in the newly formed United States of America. He
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  Speaker 1: would eat a tomato. Yep, a tomato. Before becoming a
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  Speaker 1: staple in diets worldwide, the tomato was practically anathema to
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  Speaker 1: Europeans at home and in the colonies. However, during the
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  Speaker 1: age of colonization, Europeans pillaged plenty of the America's and
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  Speaker 1: took large quantities of valuables, including food, back to their
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  Speaker 1: home countries. Many of the foods that we've come to
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  Speaker 1: consider European staples today, such as potatoes, and tomatoes originated
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  Speaker 1: in the Americas. The Aztecs were eating tomatoes as early
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  Speaker 1: as seven hundred CE, and likely introduced them to Spanish conquistadores,
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  Speaker 1: who in turn brought them back to Europe. Some new delicacies,
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  Speaker 1: like coo, were greeted with delight. Others, like the potato
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  Speaker 1: and the tomato, were only met with skepticism. The strange
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  Speaker 1: shapes and colors didn't always endear the new foods to
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  Speaker 1: the Europeans. Once most people got over their fear of
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  Speaker 1: the unknown, they cheerfully began incorporating some of these new
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  Speaker 1: ingredients into their cooking. However, some were unwilling to take
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  Speaker 1: indigenous folks word for it, and just i had to
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  Speaker 1: conduct their own studies into whether these plants were healthy
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  Speaker 1: or deadly. One of the earliest references to tomatoes in
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  Speaker 1: European literature was made by Pietro Andrea Mattioli, an Italian
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  Speaker 1: herbalist in the mid fIF hundreds. Pietro described the tomato
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  Speaker 1: as a golden apple and suggested that it was likely
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  Speaker 1: a member of the night shade family, or perhaps some
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  Speaker 1: kind of man drake. From their rumors about tomatoes took
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  Speaker 1: two paths. The first was one that Pietro originally intended
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  Speaker 1: that tomatoes were a mild afrodisiac and therefore a sinful
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  Speaker 1: food and an obstacle to salvation. The second rumor made
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  Speaker 1: tomatoes seemed downright lethal. John Girard, an English herbalist, published
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  Speaker 1: his most well known work, Herbal in fifte. Gerard was
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  Speaker 1: heavily inspired by other herbalists, although he might not have
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  Speaker 1: grasped what he was writing. Gerard plagiarized huge portions of
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  Speaker 1: other herbal books which were already inaccurate, and in short,
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  Speaker 1: created the worst game of telephone to be played in
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  Speaker 1: the sixteen cent to republishing industry. In Gerard's copy and
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  Speaker 1: paste opinion, parts of the tomato plant were highly poisonous.
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  Speaker 1: Some thought that tomatoes were only safe to eat in
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  Speaker 1: warmer climates like meso America, but might make for good
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  Speaker 1: garden ornaments. This attitude prevailed in Britain and British colonies
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  Speaker 1: like New Jersey. I think of this as sort of
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  Speaker 1: like iffy information from a TikTok video, without the ability
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  Speaker 1: to go to a medical doctor or a scientist and
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  Speaker 1: ask them for the facts. Religious fervor than fear of
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  Speaker 1: nasty demise led plenty of people to vilify the tomato.
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  Speaker 1: Even the fruits color seemed to scream danger, the bright,
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  Speaker 1: vivid reds that seemed to allude to lust, danger, and death.
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  Speaker 1: It might seem unusual, and it's easy for us to
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  Speaker 1: joke about the ridiculousness of being afraid of a tomato,
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  Speaker 1: but oddly enough, there seemed to be genuine cases of
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  Speaker 1: people getting sick after eating tomatoes. Of course, it wasn't
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  Speaker 1: the food, it was the tableware. You see. The majority
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  Speaker 1: of the people who could afford to try tomatoes and
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  Speaker 1: were theoretically dying for them, were wealthy people. Unlike poor
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  Speaker 1: folks who had wooden or clay plates and spoons, the
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  Speaker 1: wealthy used pewter, and pewter was a metal with the
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  Speaker 1: specifically high led content that would leach into the food.
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  Speaker 1: Tomatoes are extremely acidic. As it happened, acid brought out
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  Speaker 1: the poison in the pewter and led people to getting sick.
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  Speaker 1: Since no one knew where the poison was really coming from,
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  Speaker 1: the port tomato got the blame. Doctors counseled against consuming
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  Speaker 1: any tomatoes, although some chose to ignore them and survived.
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  Speaker 1: Colonel Robert Johnson was one of those people. He was
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  Speaker 1: disgusted by what he considered gross misinformation and was determined
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  Speaker 1: to prove that tomatoes weren't, in fact dangerous. They were
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  Speaker 1: healthy and delicious. He had been eating them frequently and
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  Speaker 1: hadn't suffered any ill effects. Johnson had found the fruit
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  Speaker 1: while traveling abroad and brought it home with him. He
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  Speaker 1: even hosted tournaments among his neighbors, who like to live
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  Speaker 1: on the edge, to see which of them could grow
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  Speaker 1: the largest tomato. In September are of eighteen twenty, Johnson
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  Speaker 1: trooped down to the courthouse in Salem, New Jersey, to
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  Speaker 1: stand against scientific and religious precedent to defend his favorite snack.
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  Speaker 1: Setting the basket of tomatoes down next to him, he
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  Speaker 1: reached in and, to the horror of the crowd, pulled
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  Speaker 1: out a big, ripe red one. Firmly staring down the
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  Speaker 1: masses who had stopped to watch, Johnson took a bite,
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  Speaker 1: then another, and then another. He consumed the entire basket
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  Speaker 1: while the residents of Salem watched and waited for him
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  Speaker 1: to fall down dead before their eyes. But he didn't,
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  Speaker 1: to the morbid disappointment of his neighbors. Instead, he had
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  Speaker 1: a great time, and the tomatoes reputation began to be rehabilitated.
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  Speaker 1: A couple of years later, tomato recipes would spread across
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  Speaker 1: the United States. While the accounts of the Tomato Trial
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  Speaker 1: of Salem, New Jersey might have been exaggerated, people finally
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  Speaker 1: got the nudge they needed to realize tomatoes are delightful
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  Speaker 1: in any form, And then, of course, it was up
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  Speaker 1: to the cooks to uh catch up with the times.
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  Speaker 1: Some inventions are so successful they change the way we speak.
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  Speaker 1: When we have a cold and need to blow our nose,
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  Speaker 1: we don't ask for a tissue. We ask for a kleenex.
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  Speaker 1: And if we cut ourselves on a knife in the kitchen,
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  Speaker 1: we don't reach for an adhesive bandage. We grab a
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  Speaker 1: band aid, even when that may not be the brand
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  Speaker 1: we have on hand. That's how important certain creations are
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  Speaker 1: to the zeitgeist. But one such invention isn't tied to
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  Speaker 1: a particular brand or a company. It stands alone as
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  Speaker 1: an achievement all on its own. It's been widely considered
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  Speaker 1: the best thing since well. Ever, bread is not a
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  Speaker 1: new construct. It's been around in some fashion for roughly
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  Speaker 1: thirty thousand years. However, one man believed that he could
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  Speaker 1: improve upon it in a unique way. His name was
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  Speaker 1: Otto Frederick row Vetter from Davenport, Iowa, or in eighteen eighty.
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  Speaker 1: Otto was a jeweler and an optometrist, but was always
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  Speaker 1: tinkering with something on the side. He used the skills
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  Speaker 1: that he picked up making and repairing jewelry to invent
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  Speaker 1: all sorts of other new machines. One such device was
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  Speaker 1: designed to do something people were already doing on their
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  Speaker 1: own in their kitchens. However, Otto's contraption would remove all
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  Speaker 1: of the efforts and sliced fingers from the equation. He
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  Speaker 1: wanted to build an automatic bread slicer, and Otto went
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  Speaker 1: all in. He sold all of the jewelry stores that
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  Speaker 1: he owned to pay for the research and development necessary
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  Speaker 1: to build it. A prototype was constructed around nineteen twelve,
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  Speaker 1: but after a fire wiped out both the machine and
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  Speaker 1: its blueprints in nineteen seventeen, his progress was set back
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  Speaker 1: a number of years. Then in nine seven he cracked
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  Speaker 1: the problem and developed a machine that not only sliced
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  Speaker 1: a loaf of bread into equal portions, but wrapped it
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  Speaker 1: as well. It was immediately patented, and by the summer
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  Speaker 1: of the following year, the first loaf of sliced bread
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  Speaker 1: hit the shelves. The machine itself was manufactured and mass
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  Speaker 1: allowing bakeries and grocers to slice and sell their own bread.
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  Speaker 1: For homemakers, which were mostly women at the time, it
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  Speaker 1: meant no more sharp knives and doctors visits to have
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  Speaker 1: stitches put in. Life had been made just a little
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  Speaker 1: bit easier. Sliced bread became a staple of kitchens everywhere
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  Speaker 1: for the next fifteen years, thanks to the popularity of
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  Speaker 1: Wonder Bread sold by the Continental Baking Company. In However,
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  Speaker 1: the slicing came to a halt as America entered World
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  Speaker 1: War Two. The war effort meant all sorts of materials
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  Speaker 1: such as rubber and nylon were collected for making airplane wings, uniforms,
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  Speaker 1: and tank treads. Food also became scarce as civilians sent
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  Speaker 1: what they could to the troops overseas. Rationing was soon
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  Speaker 1: implemented across the country. The lack of butter and sugar
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  Speaker 1: led to the creation of unique cakes baked with all
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  Speaker 1: kinds of ingredients substituted in. Boiled raisins were used instead
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  Speaker 1: of sugar, while vinegar was swapped in when there wasn't
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  Speaker 1: enough flour, but one color. A re creation that took
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  Speaker 1: a hit was sliced bread. In fact, automatically sliced bread
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  Speaker 1: wasn't just kept off the shelves, it was outlawed. The
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  Speaker 1: head of the War Foods Administration, Claude Wickered, believed that
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  Speaker 1: not slicing the bread would save on wax paper usage,
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  Speaker 1: and no sliced bread meant no more automatic slicing machines,
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  Speaker 1: which required large amounts of steel to manufacture. Well. To
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  Speaker 1: the people stuck at home making meals for their families
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  Speaker 1: and already dealing with all kinds of restrictions, the sliced
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  Speaker 1: bread band was a step too far. Letters started pouring
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  Speaker 1: into newspapers and magazines from the women responsible for getting
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  Speaker 1: their children and spouses out the door in a timely manner.
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  Speaker 1: Having to slice upwards of forty pieces of bread a
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  Speaker 1: day took too long and left them prone to mishaps
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  Speaker 1: with the knife. In addition, Mayor LaGuardia of New York
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  Speaker 1: City told bakeries with automatic slicers that they could keep
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  Speaker 1: using them despite the ban. This put the city's bakeries
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  Speaker 1: at odds with each other, since many did not own
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  Speaker 1: their own slicers, all in all, the National Sliced Bread
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  Speaker 1: Band only last did a few months. Ben was officially
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  Speaker 1: killed on March eight of nine. Giving up stockings and
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  Speaker 1: wire hangars were one thing, but having to slice one's
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  Speaker 1: own bread that would go down in history as an
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  Speaker 1: idea that had never been fully baked. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at the World of Lore
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  Speaker 1: dot com. And until next time, stay curious.