10 Historical Foot Facts
- Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (or Claudius I) had a club foot
- An artificial big toe found attached to the foot of an ancient Egyptian mummy may have been the world’s earliest functional prosthetic body parts
- Divine powers were attributes to polydactyls among the Maya
- Women with bound feet were once stereotypical to China, deliberately crippled to conform to male ideals of beauty
- Ancient footprints show human-like walking began nearly four million years ago
- Leonardo DaVInci invented an alarm clock that woke a person by gently rubbing their feet
- The record for the most toes on each foot goes to Akshat Saxenafrom northern India who came into the world with ten toes on each of his feet
- Toe wrestling is an actual sport in several counties, complete with a men’s and women’s division and a Toe Wrestling World Championship
- Jyoti Amge from Nagpar, India holds the world record for the smallest, non-bound feet, just 3.72 inches long
- Brahim Takioullah from Morocco hold the honor for the largest feet. At 1 foot 3 inches long, his feet require a European size 58!
10 Historical Facts about Shoes
- In the 1300s, King Edward II declared barleycorn as the basis for shoe measurement. Based on the length of a grain of barley, there are three barleycorns to an inch, so each shoe size adds a third of an inch in length to a shoe.
- The most expensive shoes ever, Dorothy’s shoes from the Wizard of OZ, sold for $660,000.
- The oldest preserved shoe is 5500 years old and was found in an Armenian cave.
- The only shoe museum in North America is located in Toronto. This museum showcases shoes spanning over 4,500 years.
- Sneakers were first made in America in 1916. They were originally called keds.
- In Europe it wasn’t until the 18th century that women’s shoes were different from men’s.
- In Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries heels on shoes were always colored red.
- The first boots were made for Queen Victoria in 1840
- The ancient Romans were the first to construct distinct left and right shoes. Before that, shoes could be worn on either foot
- The first foot coverings were probably animal skins, which Stone Age peoples in northern Europe and Asia tied around their ankles in cold weather
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