• Apple pie a la mode was the favorite dessert of Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac.
• Sweet potato pie was something that Martin Luther King, Jr. longed for.
• When he was asked about the common practice among New Englanders of eating fruit pie for breakfast, Ralph Waldo Emerson replied, "What else is pie for?"
• Dwight Eisenhower's mother taught him how to cook the family's Sunday dinner, including the apple pie that capped the meal.
• Elvis Presley had a gargantuan appetite for everything, including sweets.  He enjoyed a variety of pies, from so-called Eskimo Pies to fruit pies. For Elvis, pie-eating sometimes meant eating an entire pie, not just a slice. 
• The attorney Clarence Darrow loved eating pie. He recalled that "as a boy, I liked pie better than anything else that I could get to eat; and i have not yet grown so old but that I still like pie."
• President Calvin Coolidge had a low opinion of his wife's cooking and was willing to share it. After Grace Coolidge baked an apple pie, the president attacked the dessert with sarcasm. "Don't you think the road commissioner would be willing to pay my wife something for her recipe for pie crust?" 

A spokesman for le président cites greater attention to a healthy diet as the reason why Sarkozy now skips the cheese course — something that is inextricably linked with the nation's culinary traditions.

It all began when Röntgen experimented with the flow of an electric current in a vacuum tube.  The physicist became thoroughly frustrated because he couldn’t explain why a nearby piece of paper that was coated with barium platinocyanide became fluorescent while the current flowed.

For several days after his experiment, Röntgen arrived at the dinner table in a sour mood.  His wife recalled that he ate little food, had virtually nothing to say, and gave no reply when asked what was wrong.  On these nights, he would leave the dinner table and return to his laboratory.

Only after repeating his experiment several times did Röntgen finally absorb the magnitude of his discovery: he had produced electromagnetic radiation. 

Britain's Prospect magazine reminds us of the various ways in which meals played a starring role:

Food is everywhere in this gangster classic, and privy to a lot of trauma. Don Corleone (Marlon Brando) dies in the family tomato patch. The family soldier Clemenza instructs a hitman to "leave the gun, take the cannoli" after a mob execution. But perhaps its most famous food moment is the scene in which the young Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino, shoots a clan rival and his accomplice over dinner in an Italian restaurant. Coppola builds the tension masterfully. By the time someone says, "Try the veal. It's the best in the city," you want to crawl under the table and cower.

The Sunday before his Super Tuesday win in Tennessee, GOP hopeful Rick Santorum enjoyed barbeque at Corky's, a popular chain in the Memphis area.  It's a good city for barbeque.

One of Dr. Seuss' most famous books wouldn't have been nearly as charming if Geisel had stuck with an earlier draft that called a dish "green ham and eggs." But he swapped the words "ham" and "eggs" to produce the 1960 book's final title: Green Eggs and Ham. 

The French pediatrician got an idea: develop a sweet, high-calorie, peanut-based spread that is fortified with vitamins and minerals, and then use it to alleviate starvation in Africa. Briend called his spread Plumpy'nut, and it was credited for saving 1.9 million lives.

Yet this was a habit he brought from his home state of Arkansas.  As governor of the state, Clinton's giant-sized appetite was so well known among the state's press corps that journalists would crack jokes such as: “Is the forklift with the governor’s lunch here yet?"

The governor’s staffers went to surprising lengths to try to curb their boss’ eating. During one meeting, a Clinton staffer literally snatched a cupcake out of the governor’s hand.

Jay Leno

During her appearance on the show, Mrs. Obama convinced the TV icon to snack on an apple and sweet potato fries and then she presented him with a whole wheat-crust pizza. "That does smell very good," Leno said, eyeing the pizza. "I assume this is sausage-pepperoni." But it was not. This pizza was topped with a healthy assortment of veggies: eggplant, green peppers and zucchini. Leno took a bite.