Taking Root

Word got around, and pretty soon Craig was adding new members and new information for his growing group of subscribers. When the list got to be too unwieldy, heat pivoted into something new, a website where people could post all kinds of wings, such as classified ads, items for sale, and where their band would be performing next. He called it Craig's List, and over the next twenty seven years it became something of a time capsule, preserving a piece

of the Internet as it once was. It's sparse, black and white and blue design has barely changed, as have the kinds of items published to its thousands of pages. One of the most popular categories is missed connections where people post cryptic messages to others they might have crossed paths with during their day, the glance across a crowded subway car, or the accidental traffic jam in the supermarket ale. Missed connections is where love lorn hopefuls prey that special

someone is reading. But one years ago, before the first miss connection was ever posted, there was the Bridegroom's Oak, located in the dad Hour Forced in Schleiswig Holstein, Germany. The Bridegroom's Oak is an oak tree over five years old. It's trunk is sixteen feet around and it rises to a soaring eighty two feet tall. It was a gift him the son of a Celtic chieftain who had been tied to a different tree in the forest. A young girl came along and freed him, and the chieftain planted

the oak to thank her for her kindness. At least that's the story that people tell. In the past. Young women were encouraged to circle the tree several times under the light of a full moon. As they walked around it, they were instructed to think about the suitor they loved most without saying a word. If they performed the ritual correctly,

they would be married within a year. The tree earned its name during the late eighteen hundreds, when the daughter of a forester and a chocolate maker's son from Leipzig fell in love. The girl's father didn't want her marrying the boy, and so he forbade them from tying the not so the lovers decided to carry on their relationship behind his back. They wrote each other letters, which they deposited in a giant hole in the middle of an oak tree near their house. Soon enough, her father relented

and gave his blessing. The two were married under that same tree in June. As the story of the Roman that spread beyond the forest, others started coming to the tree to leave their own letters, hoping to find true love. They called it the brow to gum Cyca or Bridegroom's Oak, and those who availed themselves of its services made sure to leave a return address so that whomever read the

letters knew how to get in touch with them. A step ladder was even installed at the base of the tree in to allow visitors easier access to the whole. The post office even began honoring the bridegroom oak as an official letterbox, so that love sick people from all over the world could write to the tree and wait for their one true love to write them back. Today, there is a small wooden fence that forms a perimeter around the oak, save for one opening to allow visitors

access to the step ladder. Legend has it that over one couples got married after depositing letters in that tree, and crazily enough, one of those marriages happened to involve the very maleman who had spent twenty years of his career delivering other people's letters to the tree. In the nineteen nineties, the postman was invited to appear on a television program and a woman who had watched him decided to write a letter to him. She had sent it to the tree, knowing that he would be the one

to deliver it. The two eventually met and remain married to this day. But the Bridegroom's oak didn't just bring people together, It too had its own love story, and it was one for the ages. In two thousand nine, the tree was wedded to the Himmelgeist Chestnut in dusl Dorf, as it also had its own postal address. Sadly, the chestnut was not long for this world. It was cut down in two thousand fifteen due to an incurable fungus. The bridegroom's oak stands today as a widower, It's only

purpose to bring others together. Unable to turn over a new leaf. She almost looks like a little girl playing dress up with her mother's clothing. In a halt that author Henry James called ill fitting valerie, Lady Mew intensely gazes at the viewer with her slender profile and a seemingly bland backdrop. This might just have been a portrait of any other upper class British lady, but behind the lace was one of the most scandalous women of the

Victorian era. If you've been listening since the early days, the name Mew might sound familiar to you. But in case you don't want to comb through more than four episodes to find number thirty, I'll refresh your memory. On Monday, October seventeenth, eighteen fourteen, a vat inside the Horseshoe Brewery of London malfunctioned. The twenty two foot high tank was held together with iron rings and was meant to store three thousand five hundred barrels of brown porter ale for fermentation.

On that day in eighteen fourteen, though, one of the rings around the tank snapped, the whole thing burst, creating a fifteen foot high wave of beer that destroyed several buildings and killed nine people. The Horseshoe Brewery was owned by the Mew family and was one of the largest porter brewers in London. The eighteen fourteen disaster barely put a dent in their profits, too, the courts had ruled

it an act of God after all. Soon Henry Mu was created a baronet, a hereditary title awarded to commoners. But this story isn't about that event. No, that's just the little scene setting for the person who is yet to come. The Mew family might have faded into healthy obscurity after this tragedy if not for the wife of the third baronet, Valerie Lady Mu, who seemed to be the living embodiment of the phrase may you live in interesting times. If the times weren't interesting enough for her,

she certainly had a way of livening things up. Valerie Susan Langdon seemed to come from nothing, in that nothing seems to be known about her origins. She later admitted that she'd been an actress and even learned how to play the banjo, two pursuits that British aristocrats didn't greet with admiration. Acting was seen as one of the low forms of employment for women back then, and was often synonymous with sex work in high society. No one knows

exactly how she met Sir Henry Mew. She was rumored to have been working as a performer and barmaid at the Casino de Venice in Holborn when she caught his eye. The two married in secret in eighteen seventy eight, and to say the marriage caused a scandal is an understatement. We can only imagine the reaction the rest of the new family had to their newest member behind closed doors, but outside the house they presented a unified front in

opposition to Valerie, but she didn't care. Now possessing money and emoticum of influence, Valerie made a splash. In eighteen eighty three, Sir Henry's father passed away and the newlyweds inherited the family seat, a mansion called St Theobald's in Herefordshire. Valerie began transforming the palatial residence to her liking. Immediately she made it into a playground for the wealthy and

powerful of London. She threw lavish parties and entertained her guests with her in house, roller skating rink, their swimming pool, and a museum of Egyptian antiquities. The crowning glory of the four hundred tons structure was Sir Christopher Wren's temple bar, which Valerie paid to have deconstructed, moved from London, and then reconstructed as their new entrance gate. The astonishing house and parties attracted anyone who was everyone, including the Prince

of Wales. Valerie could even be seen riding around town in a high Phaeton, the sports car equivalent of a carriage, but hers was drawn by a matched pair of zebras. No one could ignore her, no matter how much they wanted to. There's no record of whether Sir Henry and his unconventional bride loved each other, but when he died in January of nineteen hundred, Valerie was the only person named in his will. She had become one of the

wealthiest women in Britain. After that, Valerie threw herself into widowhood. She owned a couple of race horses, although they didn't win often, and she was a equent visitor to a philosophical club called the Theosophical Society, and could be seen at everything from art openings to prize fights in a variety of disguises. But here's the thing. Although they drank her booze and ate her food, no one seemed to

want much from Valerie. She tried to leave her spectacular collection of antiquities to the British Museum, but the snobs there didn't want them, so they were sold after her death, and during the Second Boer War, when Valerie read about early British reverses, she bought and paid for six naval twelve pounder long guns that could be moved on special carriages. Initially, the War Office refused, so they were sent straight to

South Africa. But the most enduring a valeries flights of fancy was to commission three paintings by the scandalous artist James Whistler. Whistler was bankrupt when he took the contract for the three portraits, which were almost never finished. Apparently Valerie and Whistler rubbed each other the wrong way, so Whistler destroyed the final painting, portrait of Lady mew In

First and They Never Spoke Again. One of the previous portraits, though Harmony and Pink and Gray, alludes to Valerie's past, but it also seems to capture her renegade spirit. In it, she gazes out towards the audience, wearing a costume like dress while standing on stage defiant to the last. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about

the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.