17th October: Aubergine day

In the French Revolutionary calendar, today was Aubergine day, so here are 10 facts about aubergines/eggplants:

1. The aubergine goes by many different names. In France and the UK, it's an aubergine. In the USA and Canada, it's an eggplant (because early cultivated varieties were white or yellow and looked like Eggs). In India, it is called brinjal, which means "king of vegetables" because it is widely used in Indian cuisine. An old Italian term for it is "mela insana", insane Apple, and in olden times, people in the UK, too, would call it a "mad apple."
2. It's not actually a vegetable. Like a Tomato (to which it is in fact related) it is a fruit.
3. Aubergines belong to the nightshade family. Because of this, it was once thought the fruit was poisonous. It isn't, but eating large amounts of the leaves and flowers of the plants would be extremely bad for you.
4. They contain nicotine - more than any other edible plant, but you'd need to eat 20lbs (9kg) of them to get the same amount of nicotine from them as you would from smoking a cigarette.
5. Most of the world's aubergines are produced in China (58%) and India (25%), although Iran, Egypt and Turkey are also producers.
6. More than 4,000,000 acres (1,600,000 ha) are devoted to the cultivation of eggplant in the world.
7. The first known written record of the plant is found in an ancient Chinese agricultural treatise completed in 544. The first written record of it in England dates from the 16th century.
8. Japan has a proverb about eggplant: “The happiest omen for a New Year is first Mount Fuji, then the falcon, and lastly eggplant.”
9. In the 5th century, it was fashionable in China for women to dye their teeth grey, using a polish made out of the skins of purple aubergines.
10. There are many different varieties of aubergine, including 'Harris Special Hibush', 'Burpee Hybrid', 'Black Magic', 'Black Beauty', 'Little Fingers', 'Casper' and 'Easter Egg'.