Quite possibly the film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes was subconsciously reprising a motif present throughout Europe’s elite circles for several centuries after the vegetable was introduced to the continent. Until the 19th century tomatoes were considered killer there, too. European nobility ate foods from flatware made of pewter, which had around 30% lead, a poison if ingested. High-acidity foods, like tomatoes, leeched that lead to become poisonous themselves. Hence the connection was made: tomatoes = poison.

On this day, June 28, in 1820, legend has it the tomato-poison association was broken once and for all by an unhappy tomato farmer, Colonel Johnson. For a dozen years nobody thought his vegetable was fit for human consumption, until Johnson in dramatic fashion climbed the courthouse steps in Salem, Massachusetts and devoured a bucketful of the vegetables without suffering so much as a stomach cramp.

Of course the less well-off and the entire South of Europe had known all along tomatoes are fine. Italy in particular embraced it with gusto, creating a tomato-based dish that would make the vegetable popular everywhere. The story goes that a restaurateur in Naples wanted to make a new dish in honor of Queen Margarite, and on top of a flatbread piled on the three colors of the new Italian flag: red tomato sauce, white mozzarella, and green basil topping. Margarite pizzas have been enjoyed ever since.