Curio Cabinet

Whether you win or lose this race, you’ll feel the pain in your feet. As part of Pride Week in Madrid, revelers have, for decades, been participating in the “Carrera de Tacones,” or the race of heels. Racers, most of them men, don high-heeled shoes and run through the city’s streets. The premise of the race is predicated on the footwear’s notoriously impractical and uncomfortable nature, but high heels were once considered much more than fashion accessories. In fact, they were worn by soldiers.
 
High heels were originally developed for horseback riding in Persia, which owed much of its military success to its mounted soldiers. The pronounced heels helped riders stabilize themselves on stirrups, allowing for greater control over their steeds. Although the earliest depiction of high heels dates back to the 10th century, it’s possible that they were used before then. Regardless, high heels were largely seen as military gear, and for centuries, they were associated with masculinity. Since horseback riding was usually an activity only available to those wealthy enough to own horses, high heels were also a status symbol, and they remained that way until around the first half of the 17th century. As horseback riding became more accessible to commoners, high heels lost their distinguishing appeal, at least for a while. Then, aristocrats in Europe began wearing shoes with increasingly higher heels as a display of wealth, since such footwear would be impractical for manual labor.
 
Around the same time, red dye was gaining popularity as a sign of conspicuous consumption, and so red heels became popular. In the 18th century, King Louis XIV of France was so enamored and protective of the shoes as a status symbol that he only allowed members of his court to wear them. While high heels gradually fell out of favor with men, they became more and more popular with women in the 19th century as they, too, sought to wear impractical shoes that denoted their high status, distancing themselves from laborers. Today, some riding shoes still have more pronounced heels than most shoes, though not nearly to the degree they did in the past. Mainly, though, high heels are a fashion item regardless of social status, and they’ve earned such a reputation for being impractical that it’s considered novel to race in them. By the way, the race of heels takes place on cobblestone. Oh, those poor ankles!

 
[Image description: A pair of white, historical high-heeled shoes with pointy toes and yellow-and-green floral embroidery.] Credit & copyright: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1690-1700. Rogers Fund, 1906. Public Domain.

Going to the airport just got a lot less annoying. For decades, travelers have had to endure the inconvenience of taking their shoes on and off at security checkpoints at U.S. airports. To the relief of many, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) has now announced that they will be scrapping their much-criticized policy, and will allow travelers to keep their shoes on through security. Still, it might behoove us not to forget the criminal plot that triggered the shoes-off rule in the first place.
 
While many equate the TSA’s shoes-off rule with the September 11th terrorist attacks, it's more closely related to a completely different crime. The man responsible was Richard Reid, a British national who became radicalized and left the U.K. in 1998 to receive training from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. In December of 2001, he arrived in Brussels, Belgium, then traveled to Paris. While in Brussels, Reid purchased a pair of black sneakers, which he plotted to use in an attempted bombing. In Paris, he purchased round-trip tickets to Antigua and Barbuda which included a stop in Miami. By then, he had already rigged his sneakers with homemade explosives by cutting a space for them in the soles. Reid even hid fuses in the shoes’ tongues. Despite his efforts to disguise the device, airport security in Paris grew suspicious of Reid for several reasons. First, he used cash to purchase his tickets, which was unusual given their high price. Secondly, he carried no luggage with him despite his supposed intention to travel overseas. Delayed by airport security, Reid missed his flight and booked another for Miami, which he did manage to board successfully on December 22. During the flight, Reid made several attempts to light the fuse of his homemade “shoe bomb”, but was caught by a passenger who complained about the smell of sulfur emanating from his seat. On the second attempt, he got into an altercation with the same passenger, after which other passengers and flight attendants jumped in to subdue him. Unable to carry out his plan, Reid was tied down and injected with sedatives until authorities could detain him.
 
Although the attempted plot by the so-called “Shoe Bomber” took place in 2001, it wasn’t until 2006 that TSA instated the shoes-off policy. The rule required travelers to take off their shoes, place them in a bin, and pass them through an x-ray machine for screening before they were allowed to put them back on. It was a hassle at the best of times, and could lead to slow lines and delays at the worst of times. Now, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the TSA, claims that such screenings are no longer necessary due to more advanced scanners and an increase in the number of officers at security checkpoints.
 
As annoying as the policy may have been, it still had its supporters. After all, Reid’s homemade explosive contained just ten ounces of explosive material, yet according to the FBI, the explosion would have torn a hole in the fuselage and caused the plane to crash had it been successfully detonated. For most of the world, the consequences of Reid’s actions will be largely forgotten with the repeal of the shoes-off policy. The perpetrator himself, on the other hand, is still serving a life sentence at a maximum-security prison after pleading guilty to eight terrorism-related charges in 2002. Reid also wasn’t the last person to attempt an airline bombing. In 2009, another would-be terrorist failed to detonate an explosive hidden in his underwear, prompting the use of full-body scanners by the TSA shortly thereafter. At least they didn’t make everyone take off their underwear while in line.

 
[Image description: A pair of men’s vintage black dress shoes.] Credit & copyright: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

These are some not-so-fresh kicks. Archaeologists in England have unearthed 2,000-year-old pairs of Roman shoes, and they’re some of the best preserved footwear from the era. The researchers were working at the Magna Roman Fort in Northumberland, located near another ancient Roman fort called Vindolanda, when they made the discovery. Many famous artifacts have been unearthed at Vindolanda, including wooden writing tablets and around 5,000 pairs of ancient Roman shoes. The Magna site, it seems, is literally following in those footsteps, with 32 shoes found so far preserved in the fort’s “ankle-breaker” trenches. Originally designed to trip and injure attackers, the trenches ended up being a perfect, anaerobic environment to preserve the shoes.
 
Roman shoes were made with hand-stitched leather, and many were closed-toed as opposed to the sandals often portrayed in popular media (in fact, sandals were only worn indoors). The ancient Romans were actually expert shoemakers, and their footwear contributed greatly to their military success. Most Roman soldiers wore caligae, leather boots consisting of an outer shell cut into many strips that allowed them to be laced up tightly. Replaceable iron hobnails on the soles helped the boots last longer and provided traction on soft surfaces. These boots were eventually replaced with completely enclosed ones called calcei, but the caligae have left a greater impression on the perception of Roman culture. That’s probably thanks to Caligula, the infamous Roman emperor whose real name was Gaius. When Gaius was a child, he accompanied his father on campaign in a set of kid-sized legionary gear, including the caligae. The soldiers then started calling him “Caligula,” which means “little boots.” Unfortunate, since he had some big shoes to fill as the third emperor of Rome.

 
[Image description: A detailed, black-and-white illustration of two elaborately-dressed ancient Roman soldiers looking at one another.] Credit & copyright: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Two Roman Soldiers, Giovanni Francesco Venturini, 17th century. Bequest of Phyllis Massar, 2011. Public Domain.