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Satanic Tomatoes and Other Weird Details Not Taught in History Class

Khalid Elhassan July 4, 2020 33 min

South Lawn - Goat — Wilson's sheep. Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

5. Mind Blown

After a night in jail, things got even more weird for Manetto, when the morning brought two “relatives” – the real Matteo’s brothers – to the prison, who claimed him as their kin. They paid his debt and freed him, while berating him for his gambling and wastrel ways. More bewildered now than ever, Manetto was escorted to Matteo’s home on the other side of Florence.

There, the cabinet maker’s protests that he was Manetto, and not Matteo, were dismissed with derision. During that day and evening, he was nearly convinced that he had, indeed, morphed into somebody else. Eventually, Manetto was put to sleep with a potion supplied by Brunelleschi, and carried unconscious back to his own home, for the final chapter of the prank.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.