Ten things you never knew about... feet
TODAY is the feast day of St Margaret the Barefooted (1325-1395) an Italian saint who walked barefooted to help her identify with the problems of the poor.
1. Nearly a quarter of all your bones are in your feet.
2. George IV (1762–1830) is said to have been the first person to wear a pair of shoes specially tailored for his right and left feet.
3. Most people in Britain had to wait until around 1850 for shoes made for right and left feet.
4. A study in 1994 reported that the average length of a North American adult male foot was not 12 inches but 10.35 inches.
5. Butterflies taste things through their feet.
6. Leonardo da Vinci invented an alarm clock that woke the sleeper gently by rubbing his feet.
7. Light travels 11.8 inches in a billionth of a second. The US physicist David Mermin has proposed calling this distance “one phoot”.
8. Research shows that mosquitoes prefer biting people with smelly feet.
9. In November 1997, the Californian Supreme Court ruled that feet are not deadly weapons, as defined by the law of aggravated assault.
10. Margaret the Barefooted is patron saint of brides, difficult marriages, victims of abuse and widows.
