Like a lot of fruits, vegetables and livestock, the modern tomato looks very little like it did before agriculture.  Before it was first cultivated, wild tomatoes were much smaller, probably the size of cherries, and were most likely yellow.  No one knows for sure because in their native Central America and western South America, no one bothered to keep records of the gradual agricultural development of the tomato. By the time the tomato made its way north to the Aztec Empire, it started to take on the round, red appearance it has today.  The word tomato comes from tomatl ([to ˌmatɬ], or “toh MATS”), originating from Nahuatl, the main language of the Aztecs.  It means “fat water” or “fat thing”.  The Aztecs developed the fruit further, coming up with something they called xitomatl ([ˌʃit o ˈmatɬ], or “SHEET oh MAHTS”).   Xitomatl translates roughly as “fat thing with navel”.  When the Spanish arrived in the New World, this is the version of ...

In 1798, Napoleon Buonaparte proposed a French invasion of Egypt and Syria.  Since he wasn’t emperor yet, he had to ask permission from the Directoire, which was a panel of five people who were running France in the late days of the French Revolution.  Napoleon’s pitch was that an invasion of Egypt would protect French interests and damage English trade, and also put France in a good position to start cutting deals with the princes of India, who were mostly under direct or indirect control of the English.  France and England were at war at this time, so it sounded good to the Directoire.  They gave him the troops and their blessing, however improbable Napoleon’s scheme was. The campaign in Egypt didn’t go as well as Napoleon had hoped.  His troops wound up fighting both the English and the Ottoman Empire.  Though they saw a lot of victories, Egypt was just too much to control, and those two empires were just too much to fight.  The invasion res...