National Shoe The World Day is observed annually on March 15th.
Each day, over 500 million children, teens and adults around the world do not have a pair of shoes to wear, and despite the terrain and the climate, they have to walk barefoot everywhere. Visit Soles4Souls to donate shoes.
- Men were the first people to wear heels.
- Platform shoes used to be worn by Greek actors to signify status.
- In the late 1800s, people started calling sneakers their name because they had rubber soles which enabled people to walk or “sneak” around without making a sound.
- Sneakers were first made in America in 1916. They were originally called keds.
- The red sole on Louboutins are inspired by an Andy Warhol drawing.
- Audrey Hepburn could be credited with bringing loafers into style.
- Salvatore Ferragamo invented the wedge shoe when Italy was suffering from closed trade with other countries.
- Shoe sizes began with barleycorn. In the early 1300s, Britain established the first means to measure shoe size. King Edward II declared barleycorn as the basis for shoe measurement. He ruled that the length of three barleycorns were equivalent to one inch, making this the standard for sizing.
- U.S. women own an average of 19 pairs of shoes.
- The first pair of right- and left-footed shoes was made in Philadelphia.
- The first lady’s boot was created for Queen Victoria in 1840.
- Jimmy Choo constructed his first pair of shoes at age 11.
- Carrie Bradshaw’s infamous shoe collection is estimated to cost more than $40,000.
- 4,000 years ago the first shoes were made of a single piece of rawhide that enveloped the foot for both warmth and protection.
- In Europe pointed toes on shoes were fashionable from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries.
- In the Middle East heels were added to shoes to lift the foot from the burning sand.
- In Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries heels on shoes were always colored red.
- The Bata Shoe Museum, located in Toronto, Canada, is the only shoe museum in North America. The collection was compiled by Sonja Bata, of the Bata shoemaking family. The museum features shoes and shoe-related artifacts spanning 4,500 years.
- In Biblical times a sandal was given as a sign of an oath.
- In the Middle Ages a father passed his authority over his daughter to her husband in a shoe ceremony. At the wedding, the groom handed the bride a shoe, which she put on to show she was then his subject.
- Today in the U.S. shoes are tied to the bumper of the bridal couple’s car. This is a reminder of the days when a father gave the groom one of his daughter’s shoes as a symbol of a changing caretaker.
- In China one of the bride’s red shoes is tossed from the roof to ensure happiness for the bridal couple.
- In Hungary the groom drinks a toast to his bride out of her wedding slipper.
- During the 16th Century, Aristocratic women began to wear shoes that were extremely high heeled. The heels on some of these shoes were so high that the women needed servants to help them walk
- “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” is the famous quote by Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. The boots that he wore when he took the first steps on the moon are now floating in space somewhere. His boots were discarded before coming back to Earth for fear of contamination.
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