On Sunday, 30 January 1949, the CBS radio network broadcast a “reenactment” of Robert Gibbon Johnson eating the first tomato in the United States, an event that supposedly took place in Salem, New Jersey, in September 1820. According to the broadcast, which was on the CBS You Are There series, until Johnson’s moment in 1820 Americans considered the tomato poisonous. Johnson, one of Salem’s most prominent citizens, had imported tomato seeds from South America and planted them in his garden. When the plants produced fruit Johnson announced that he intended to eat a tomato on the courthouse steps. On the appointed day, as the CBS version told it, hundreds of onlookers gathered to watch Johnson eat a tomato—and die a painful death. Johnson sank his teeth into the tomato but did not die. His brave act shocked the crowd and changed the course of American culinary history. Thanks to Johnson’s courage, Americans started eating tomatoes—or so the story went.
