There are some legends that have hidden secrets, and if you dig deep enough, you'll learn something absolutely curious about them.
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Welcome to Aaron Benky's Cabinet of Curiosity is a production of I Heart Radio and Grim 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. They say the apple never falls far from the tree. The implied meaning, I think is that kids tend to echo their parents. Maybe you hear your mother in the way you laugh, or perhaps you see your nose in the mirror every morning and are instantly reminded of your grandfather and his siblings. Look no further than Danny Harrison, son of Beatle George Harrison, or Ken Griffey Jr. His father, both of whom were popular prominent Major League Baseball players, And while Griffey Jr's son didn't follow his family into the same game, he ended up playing in the NFL. But the old adage isn't universally true. In fact, some kids fall pretty far from the parental tree, and William was one of them. It wasn't all his fault, though. People are often a product of the times they live in. And William lived through some of the most tumultuous in history, the sort of turmoil that gives birth to a brand new sovereign nation. In fact, his parents weren't married when he was born around seventeen thirty, and much of his time was spent in the care of his mother. But William's father was right there making sure he had a good education and plenty of job opportunities, and at that time in the American colonies, there was plenty of growth to take advantage of. As a teen, he joined the Pennsylvania Provincial Troops, gaining a quick military experience during his service in King George's War. When he left, he had reached the rank of captain. Years later, in seventeen sixty two, William married a woman from England name Elizabeth, who he met while they're on a trip with his father, and with that his life seemed to be entering that stable period most adults hoped for. After the wedding, the new couple moved back to North America, settling in the colony of New Jersey, where he had been given a new job serving as the colony's royal governor. Yeah, it was a big deal, and I imagined. William was pretty proud of that. He loved his English roots and had risen up the ranks of power pretty quickly. But I mentioned that he was the sort of apple that didn't fall close to the family tree, didn't I. You See, while William was utterly loyal to the Crown of England, his father was different. The seventeen seventies were full of rumors of impending war, a war that would pit the American colonies against their overbearing, unjust authorities across the Atlantic, and Williams father supported that uprising. In fact, the older and visited William many times to beg him to reconsider his military service would earn him top ranks in the American forces, he was sure of it, but William refused. His loyalties were to the king, and that was that. It didn't matter that every single one of his fellow colonial governors had already thrown their hats into the rebellion. It didn't matter that William's own son had sided with William's father, It didn't matter that troops were being assembled on both sides of the conflict. He was stubbornly committed to the Crown. Finally, in seventeen seventy six, colonial forces put him and Elizabeth under house arrest. She would die in custody, but he would stay there until seventeen seventy eight, when he was released in a prisoner exchange. But even the loss of his wife and his job wasn't enough to stop him. For the next few years, as the Revolutionary War raged on across the colonies, William worked as the leader of the American Loyalist movement, people actively working to defeat the Americans. He even encouraged guerilla warfare against rebel groups, hoping to earn favor with the crown by helping British forces. And he was vicious too. But we all know how the Revolutionary War was going to end, right, and by seventeen eighty two, Williams saw it coming. Admitting defeat, he boarded a ship and headed to London, leaving his life in America behind. He would die there three decades later in eighteen thirteen, and his father, well, dear old Dad cut William almost entirely out of his autobiography and his will And that was a big deal too. Why well, because all these years later, folks are still talking about William's father, while he's become something of an overlooked footnote, although how could he really compete with a father who was a famous writer, publisher, scientist, postmaster, inventor, political activist, and statesman, A man who seemed to alter the course of history with his printing press, and who who had the courage to stand in a lightning storm with a kite and a key. William's father, Benjamin Franklin. There's an old saying that goes behind every great man, there's a great woman. Women have been responsible for some of the most important achievements in history, only to have their contributions severely reduced or even erased by men. Charles Babbage, for example, was credited with creating the analytical engine, a precursor to the computer as we know today. However, it was a mathematician named Ada Lovelace who developed an algorithm for the device that could compute Bernouly numbers, and although the analytical Engine was never completed in her lifetime, lovelaces algorithm made her the world's first computer programmer, an achievement that wouldn't be recognized for over a century. Many were also demonized by the men who ruled over society, Not only were their efforts overshadowed, they were often tainted. Over time, men's accusations and beliefs colored women's contributions and their reputations in a negative light, and it's taken decades, sometimes even centuries, for corrections to be made. If at all want proof, look no further than medieval ale wives. Though today's beer industry is a male dominated field, beer was originally brewed by women. In ancient Babylon, women not only made the beloved beverage, but they sold it as well. It wasn't until beer's introduction into ancient Egypt when men eventually took over the trade. Meanwhile, in Europe, women run taverns and breweries. Flourished brewster has produced a drink called ale, which lacked the hops found in today's beer. In fact, it was a German nun named Hildegarde who suggested hops as an ingredient at all, thanks to its healing, bettering, and preserving properties sometime in the twelfth century. Yet, despite an increasingly male presence in the beer trade over the years, women still dominated. During the Middle Ages, they were called ale wives, and they sold their goods in crowded markets which were packed to the brim with thirsty customers, so in order to stand out among the crowds, the ale wives would don special clothing, namely tall, pointy hats. These hats were tall enough to be seen by anyone, even from several yards away. And of course they had to have beer to sell, which meant hauling it from the brewing location to the markets. But rather than stock individual bottles, ale wives transported their beer in large cauldrons, which allowed them to carry a lot more at one time, and those who sold beer out of their homes hung brooms above their front doors to indicate that they were open for business. Oh and one last detail. Vermin was also a major concern for brewers, as mice and other rodents would nibble on the grain used for brewing. To combat that threat, ale wives employed the use of cats to chase them away. Unfortunately, these women owned businesses didn't last forever. Patriarchal society wouldn't let them, and as the Reformation spread across Europe, female brewers became the perfect scapegoats for Christianity, which labeled them as witches. It was theorized that as the Protestants and Catholic churches waged war against each other for supremacy. They campaigned among the public to increase their numbers, and there was no better way to boost recruitment than to offer protection against the biggest threat of all, the devil. Agents of the church accused women of using their cauldrons to brew potions, not beer, and those black hats they weren't really pest control, they said, they were the witches familiars, little demons in animal form that attended to a witch's every need. Eventually, women had no choice but to abandon the beer trade to save their lives. In the mid fifteen hundreds, one English town even passed a law prohibiting women between the ages of fourteen and forty from becoming ale wives. After all, if a woman was working, she was probably too busy to get married, let alone tend to her household in children. From that point forward, men rose to prominence as makers and sellers of beer, a tradition that has continued to this day. And the ale wives, well, they never truly outgrew their witchy accusations. Their pointy hats, broomsticks, cauldrons and cats all became cliches of witches, and we can still find them depicted that way in books, films, and television today, though some historians argue about the accuracy of such claims, it's hard not to see the link between the ale wives of old and the witches we know today. Regardless, it's clear that women invented the beer industry, only to have it taken away by men. It's like James Brown once saying, it's a man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing without a woman or a girl. 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 the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,