Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all of these amazing tales are right there on display, just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. On Christmas Eve of two thousand and nine, Gurgile Barkie was looking desperately for a way to keep his three
year old daughter entertained. There was lots of work to do to ensure a magical Christmas morning, and Barkie was eager to get his daughter to settle down. Like many families, Barkie's household had run through all the usual Christmas movies. Barkie flipped across dozens of television channels, all playing this same three holiday films, until he finally came across one plane something different. One channel had just begun playing the
nineteen ninety nine movie Stuart Little. Not very festive, but at least it was something Barkie's daughter hadn't seen, and just as he was about to return to his Christmas morning preparations, his daughter asked him to sit and watch it with her. Barkie fought off a groan fine he would watch this ten year old movie featuring a talking mouse instead of attending to his growing to do list.
It was Christmas, after all.
When Barkiy agreed to spend this time with his daughter, he had no way of knowing that he would be rewarded with the best Christmas gift he could have ever asked for, not quality family time, though we can assume he was grateful for that as well. No, Barkie's reward came in the form of Stuart Little's living room, specifically one painting on the living room's far wall. Barkie leapt from his seat. He dove for the remote before remembering that the movie was playing on cable and he had
no way to pause or rewind it. For a moment, he was rush and then the painting appeared again on screen, and again and again. You see, gurgilely, Barkie wasn't just an exhausted dad trying to make Christmas magical for his family.
He was also a researcher for the Hungarian National Gallery and an expert in the paintings of Robert Barney, a Hungarian expressionist painter from the early twentieth century who was famous for several works, but most notably for Sleeping Lady with Black Vaz, and that particular work, Sleeping Lady with Black Vaz, depicted Baroney's second wife in repose.
He had completed the.
Painting around nineteen twenty five, and records show that it was sold in nineteen twenty eight. Since then, the painting had been lost to time. Researchers, including Barkie, suspected that this was due to the political upheaval in Hungary during the period. The buyer and their family may have purchased the painting and then left Europe shortly afterwards.
The question then.
Became, how did a painting last see in nineteen twenty eight wind up on the set of Stuart Little Before the movie had ended, Barkie got right to work. He bombarded the production staff of the movie with emails and voicemails asking how and where they had found the painting. It was the best Christmas present for an art historian, Barkie said, and then nothing. For two long years, his
requests for information went unanswered. Doubt crept in. Could the painting that he saw in Stuart Little have been just a replica. Barkie watched the film over and over to be sure, and came to the conclusion that it must be the real thing. After all, barony was no worldwide phenomenon, and the painting was not well known outside of Hungary. Finally, he received an email from the assistant set director of the movie. She had purchased the painting at an antique
shop in Pasadena. She told him the set team felt that it fit the elegant esthetic of Stuart Little's house, and when the movie wrapped, she had asked to take it home, and the painting had hung in her Washington, d c. Bedroom ever since. She invited Barkie to come in person and confers firm the identity of the painting. Within a few months, he flew from Hungary to Washington and met up with this assistant set director near the National Mall. As soon as he laid eyes on the painting,
he was sure it was the real thing. There's only one thing left to check, he told the woman. Barkie strode to a nearby hot dog vendor and asked to borrow a screwdriver.
The vendor was happy to oblige.
Barkie then unscrewed the protective backing from the antique frame and ran his eyes over the underside of the canvas, and there it was. In the lower corner was the stamped date nineteen twenty eight, the last time it was exhibited. Before the painting was purchased, the lost painting had been found. The assistant set director sold the painting about a year later to a private collector for two hundred and eighty
five thousand dollars. For his part, Barkie gained fame and notoriety in the art historian community, and even published a book about Barony's works, including the.
Story of his discovery.
Barkie says getting to help solve the mystery is reward enough for him, but he added, with a twinkle in his eye, I do watch movies very differently now. In the early morning hours of May twenty first of nineteen twenty four, just outside the small town of Lone Pine, California,
a sudden explosion lit up the desert night. When police arrived, they found that the blast had blown a massive hole in the Los Angeles Aqueduct, which carried water from the farmland of Owens Valley all the way to the city of Los Angeles, two hundred miles away. Southern California was in the middle of a long drought, and thanks to this act of vandalism, millions of gallons of precious water
had already spilled out onto the sand. The police reckoned that it would have taken at least five hundred pounds of dynamite to cut through the iron and conquer creed of the aqueduct, which meant that they had a major criminal plots on their hands. Immediately, the LA Mayor put up a ten thousand dollars reward for information leading to the suspects in the bombing, and detectives were sent into
nearby towns to investigate. But even though it seemed like everyone in Owens Valley knew exactly who was responsible for the blast, nobody would say a peep to them. The bombers were heroes. The residents of Owens Valley had been unhappy about the aqueduct from the beginning. It had been built more than a decade prior to help the booming city of Los Angeles keep up with its growing water demand.
By so much of their local water supply being siphoned off and sent to the city, the farmers and ranchers in Owens Valley were struggling. Land dried up crops, wilted farmers lost their profits, and the local economy began to fail. Finally, the people of Owens Valley had decided that enough was enough and it was time to fight back, and amazingly, that bombing outside Loan Pine was just the beginning of
what became known as the Kel Water Wars. A few months later, dozens of Owens Valley residents drove out to that same area and commandeered the aqueduct by force. They opened the spillway gates and let the water flow out, threatening to let it keep spilling until the City of Los Angeles came out to settle their grievances, and they stayed there for days, resisting the sheriff's orders to leave, until the city of La agreed to negotiate with them. Over the next few years, there were more and more
bombings and acts of sabotage. The Los Angeles Water Department had to hire armed guards with machine guns to protect the aqueduct twenty four to seven. The battles continued until nineteen twenty seven, when the main bank in Owens Valley suddenly went belly up. The bank's co owners, Wilfred and Mark Watterson, and I know the last names. Ironed is not lost on me, had been helping to organize and
fund the rebellion, and without them, the resistance collapsed. The Waterson brothers were charged with thirty six counts of embezzlement and grand theft, and during their trial they admitted that they had stolen money from the bank to fund the water wars against Los Angeles.
The brothers were both.
Sentenced to ten years in prison, making them the only people who ever faced criminal charges.
For the water Wars.
It was a hard fought battle, but in the end, Owens Valley was no match for the bustling city of Los Angeles. The city kept buying up land and water, and by the next year, the once green landscape of Owens Valley had completely turned to sand. The farmers and ranchers who lived in the area were forced to sell their land and move away, and meanwhile, Los Angeles kept growing and city officials kept doing whatever it took to survive and thrive in the barren deserts of southern California.
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 Mankey 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 Theworldoflore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.