Food has played a starring role in the lives of so many famous or infamous people. Diplomatic agreements have been negotiated over elaborate feasts, novels have been fueled by strong coffee, and marriages have ended over a meal gone bad.
In What the Great Ate, brothers Matthew and Mark Jacob have cooked up a bountiful sampling of the peculiar culinary likes, dislikes, habits, and attitudes of famous — and often notorious — figures throughout history.
In this photo from the 1920s, First Lady Grace Coolidge samples a cookie that was made by a Girl Scout troop in New York State. President Calvin Coolidge made derisive comments about his wife's kitchen skills.
Rube Waddell was one of baseball's outstanding pitchers during the early 1900s. But he had a habit that greatly aggravated his catcher and roommate — eating animal crackers in bed. The team's owner got Waddell to sign a contract in which the pitcher agreed to cease this annoying habit.
Thursday, August 16, 2012 at 07:27AM 
By 1928, Al Capone carried 255 pounds on his five-feet, 10-and-a-half inch frame. “Mountains of pasta and Niagaras of Chianti had deposited layers of fat” on the gangster’s body, wrote one biographer.