Shoe Size facts
While investigating facts about Shoe Size, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The Queen of England has someone who breaks in her shoes for her before she wears them ,”...the shoes have to be immediately comfortable and to achieve this, a member of staff with the same size feet will trot up and down palatial corridors for her until they are suitably broken in.”
There is an organization called the National Odd Shoe Exchange where you can send and receive shoes if your feet are different sizes
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 42 of the best facts about Shoe Size I managed to collect.
-
The Statue of Liberty's sandals are 25 feet long, making her shoe size 879.
-
The tallest man ever recorded in human history was Illinois born, Robert Wadlow at 8'11 (2.72 m) tall. With a shoe size of 37AA (47 cm) and a wingspan of 9.5 feet (2.88 m). When he passed from infection in 1940 his coffin was 10.9 feet long (3.28 m).
-
The Statue of Liberty wears a size 879 shoe.
-
Over the age of 40, feet can grow over half a shoe size every 10 years.
-
The world's largest oyster is 35.5 cm (13.97 in) long, about the size of a size 44 (11 US) shoe; it is still alive (and growing), and has 5 other oysters attached to it
-
Up until 1970, shoe sizes were traditionally measured with X-rays
-
English king Edward I of England, introduced new measurement system during his reign at the beginning of the 14th century. 3 barleycorns were equal to the size of one inch, 39 barleycorns to the size of one foot and 117 barleycorns to the size of one yard. Modern shoe size system originates from that period. Size 13 for example, corresponds to the length of 13 barleycorns.
-
Phil Spector surrounded the house with barbed wire, guard dogs and confiscated his wife's shoes to keep her from leaving. On the rare occasions he allowed her out alone, Ronnie Spector had to drive with a life-size dummy of Phil. Ronnie forfeited all future record earnings after death threats
-
If the Statue of Liberty was a real woman, she would need a size 879 shoe.
-
There is a non profit organization 501(c)(3) whose purpose is to help provide either single shoes and pairs of significantly different sizes to veterans and handicapped persons. The National Odd Shoe Exchange serves as a clearing house for those registered with odd sized feet.
What is true about shoe size?
You can easily fact check it by examining the linked well-known sources.
The difference in length between whole-numbered shoe sizes in the UK is measured by one barleycorn.
Shoe shops used X-Ray machines to measure shoe sizes in the 1940s before the risks of X-Rays were fully understood. - source
Chubby Checker, singer of The Twist, sued HP for making an app called Chubby Checker that was used to unscientifically estimate penis size from shoe size. - source
Those shoe-size measuring things are called Brannock Devices
About baseball player Hack Wilson, part of the inspiration for Tom Hanks’ character in “A League Of Their Own.” At 5’6” and 195 lbs with an 18” neck and a 5 1/2 shoe size, he was referred to as being “built along the lines of a beer keg, and was not wholly unfamiliar with its contents.” - source
Despite being 6'1 and weighing 250lbs, John Cena only wears a size 9 shoe
Sock sizing is simply the size of your foot in inches which is why it is unrelated to shoe sizing.
British shoe sizes are measured in "barleycorns"--an otherwise obsolete unit of length dating from the Anglo-Saxon period and equal to 1/3 inch.
There is no real correlation between penis size and shoe size
During Medieval Europe, the use of pointy shoes started as a fad to signify status, but as the size of the toe-tips continuously increased, the English crown felt the need to intervene, because of "lascivious connotations".
Mike Tyson, while standing just 5'9, wears size 16 (US) shoes