The record for the person with the biggest feet in the world is held by an American, called Robert Wadlow.
His feet were 47cm long and he took size 37 shoes!
He was 2.74 metres (that's nearly 9 ft) tall when he died in 1940.
Whenever he went out for a “Giant” walk, drivers would take their eyes off the road in disbelief and stare in amazement as they passed. You could hear the sound of bangs, crashes and crunches as cars following behind ran into them.
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Did you know...
American President Abraham Lincoln, had size 14 feet
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Giant Leaps
The first person to walk on the moon was the American astronaut, Neil Armstrong. He set foot on the lunar surface at 3.56am BST on 21st July 1969.
See if you can find out what he said as he stepped onto the moon - it’s something to do with small steps.
By the way, his footprints are still there because there's no wind or rain on the Moon.
His boots were jettisoned before returning to earth to prevent contamination.
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Did you know...
If you walked at a steady speed of 5kph (3 mph) non-stop day and night, it would take you a whole year to walk round the equator - a distance of 40,000 km (25,000 miles).
The average person walks the equivalent of three and a half times around the earth in a lifetime.
One quarter of all the bones in the human body are found in the feet.
Left handed people are generally left footed as well. They also tend to put their left foot forward first when they walk.
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First Walk for Charity
The first walk for charity in the UK took place on Boxing Day in 1959 in aid of the World Refugee Fund. A total of 21 walkers paid 1 shilling (5p) each to enter and raised £20 in sponsorship. The furthest anyone walked was 50 miles.
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Did you know...
Cats walk on their claws and not on their paws!
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Did you know...
The first pedestrian crossing in Great Britain was sited near the Houses of Parliament in London, in December 1926. It consisted of two parallel white lines painted across the road. A white rectangular sign was positioned high up on a nearby pole, with a black directional arrow and a cross shape painted on it. It read, “Please Cross Here”. They were very polite in those days.
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Did you know...
About 1 in 4 children sleepwalk at least once between the ages of 7 to 12!
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Did you know...
The first manually operated traffic light in GB was also sited near the Houses of Parliament in London, on 10th December 1868. It was introduced to allow MP’s to enter the parliament buildings in their horse drawn carriages.. (The streets of London were just as congested then, but with four legged motors instead!).
A revolving gas illuminated lantern was mounted on a 7 metre (22 ft) high iron pillar with Red and Green signals.
Red meant stop and Green meant caution.
It was removed in 1872 following an explosion of gas, which seriously injured the police constable operating it.
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Did you know...
The first Pelican Crossing was introduced in 1969. The word “Pelican” was chosen because it is a Pedestrian Light Control. Can you see why?
Today, there are “Puffin” and “Toucan” crossings. See if you can find out why these names were chosen.
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Did you know...
You need to use 200 muscles in your body to walk
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Did you know...
The first Zebra Crossings in the UK were introduced in 1951. The flashing belisha beacons on either side of the crossing came first though in 1934. They were originally made of glass but were the constant prey of children with stones. They were replaced with plastic globes in 1952. See if you can find out why they are called belisha beacons.
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Did you know...
The mudskipper is a fish that can actually walk on land!
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Did you know...
The first school crossing patrol started work in Oxford in 1933. The name "Lollipop" person came much later when the familiar round sign on a pole was introduced. Today's Lollipop people have to deal with much more traffic than was on the roads in 1933.
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Did you know...
It is against the law to take your shoes off if you have smelly feet in a theatre in Winnatka, Illinois.
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Most Expensive Legs
Michael Flatley, star of "Riverdance" had his legs insured for £25 million.
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Most Expensive Feet
Charlie Chaplin, Hollywood's silent
comedian with the splay footed trademark walk, had his feet insured for
$150,000 (£33,500) in the 1920's; a fortune at the time.
A five-year-old
monkey at an Israeli zoo started walking exclusively on her hind legs after
recovering from a serious stomach flu.
Natasha, a black macaque, almost died of a severe stomach flu about two weeks ago, say officials at the Safari Park zoo near Tel Aviv. She had difficulty breathing and her heart wasn't functioning properly. However, her condition stabilized and she was released from the zoo's clinic.
Workers at the zoo say that's when she started walking upright exclusively. Monkeys usually alternate between upright walking and moving on all fours. A zoo veterinarian, Igal Horowitz says he's not sure why she has altered her behaviour, speculating that the illness could have caused brain damage.
Other than walking upright, the vet says Natasha's behaviour has returned to normal.
Humans evolved from ape-like
ancestors because they needed to run long
distances – perhaps to hunt animals or scavenge
carcasses on Africa’s vast savannah – and the
ability to run shaped our anatomy, making us look
like we do today.
That is the conclusion of a study published in the
Nov. 18 issue of the journal Nature by University of
Utah biologist Dennis Bramble and Harvard
University anthropologist Daniel Lieberman. The
study is featured on Nature’s cover.
Bramble and Lieberman argue that our genus,
Homo, evolved from more ape-like human ancestors,
Australopithecus, 2 million or more years ago
because natural selection favored the survival of
australopithecines that could run and, over time,
favored the perpetuation of human anatomical
features that made long-distance running possible.
“We are very confident that strong selection for
running – which came at the expense of the
historical ability to live in trees – was instrumental in
the origin of the modern human body form,” says
Bramble, a professor of biology. “Running has
substantially shaped human evolution. Running
made us human – at least in an anatomical sense.
We think running is one of the most transforming
events in human history. We are arguing the
emergence of humans is tied to the evolution of
running.”
That conclusion is contrary to the conventional
theory that running simply was a byproduct of the
human ability to walk. Bipedalism – the ability to
walk upright on two legs – evolved in the ape-like
Australopithecus at least 4.5 million years ago while
they also retained the ability to travel through the
trees. Yet Homo with its “radically transformed
body” did not evolve for another 3 million or more
years – Homo habilis, Homo erectus and, finally,
our species, Homo sapiens – so the ability to walk
cannot explain anatomy of the modern human body,
Bramble says.
“There were 2.5 million to 3 million years of bipedal
walking [by australopithecines] without ever looking
like a human, so is walking going to be what
suddenly transforms the hominid body?” he asks.
“We’re saying, no, walking won’t do that, but
running will.”
Walking cannot explain most of the changes in
body form that distinguish Homo from
Homo – had short legs, long forearms, high
permanently “shrugged” shoulders, ankles that were not visibly apparent
and more muscles
connecting the shoulders to the head and neck, Bramble says. If natural
selection had not favored
running, “we would still look a lot like apes,” he adds.
Bramble and Lieberman examined 26 traits of the human body – many also
seen in fossils of
Homo erectus and some in Homo habilis – that enhanced the ability to run.
Only some of them
were needed for walking. Traits that aided running include leg and foot
tendons and ligaments that
act like springs, foot and toe structure that allows efficient use of the
feet to push off, shoulders
that rotate independently of the head and neck to allow better balance,
and skeletal and muscle
features that make the human body stronger, more stable and able to run
more efficiently without
overheating.
“We explain the simultaneous emergence of a whole bunch of anatomical features,
literally from
head to toe,” Bramble says. “We have a hypothesis that gives a functional
explanation for how
these features are linked to the unique mechanical demands of running,
how they work together
and why they emerged at the same time.”
Humans are poor sprinters compared with other running animals, which is
partly why many
scientists have dismissed running as a factor in human evolution. Human
endurance running
ability has been inadequately appreciated because of a failure to recognize
that “high speed is not
always important,” Bramble says. “What is important is combining reasonable
speed with
exceptional endurance.”
Another reason is that “scientists are in developed societies that are
highly dependent on
technology and artificial means of transport,” he adds. “But if those scientists
had been embedded
in a hunter-gatherer society, they’d have a different view of human locomotor
abilities, including
running.”
The researchers do not know why natural selection favored human ancestors
who could run long
distances. For one possibility, they cite previous research by University
of Utah biologist David
Carrier, who hypothesized that endurance running evolved in human ancestors
so they could
pursue predators long before the development of bows, arrows, nets and
spear-throwers reduced
the need to run long distances.
Another possibility is that early humans and their immediate ancestors
ran to scavenge
carcasses of dead animals – maybe so they could beat hyenas or other scavengers
to dinner, or
maybe to “get to the leftovers soon enough,” Bramble says.
Scavenging “is a more reliable source of food” than hunting, he adds. “If
you are out in the African
savannah and see a column of vultures on the horizon, the chance of there
being a fresh carcass
underneath the vultures is about 100 percent. If you are going to hunt
down something in the heat,
that’s a lot more work and the payoffs are less reliable” because the animal
you are hunting often
is “faster than you are.”
Here are anatomical characteristics that are unique to humans and that
play a role in helping
people run, according to the study:
-- Skull features that help prevent overheating during running. As sweat
evaporates from the scalp,
forehead and face, the evaporation cools blood draining from the head.
Veins carrying that cooled
blood pass near the carotid arteries, thus helping cool blood flowing through
the carotids to the
brain.
-- A more balanced head with a flatter face, smaller teeth and short snout,
compared with
australopithecines. That “shifts the center of mass back so it’s easier
to balance your head when
you are bobbing up and down running,” Bramble says.
-- A ligament that runs from the back of the skull and neck down to the
thoracic vertebrae, and
acts as a shock absorber and helps the arms and shoulders counterbalance
the head during
running.
-- Unlike apes and australopithecines, the shoulders in early humans were
“decoupled” from the
head and neck, allowing the body to rotate while the head aims forward
during running.
-- The tall human body – with a narrow trunk, waist and pelvis – creates
more skin surface for our
size, permitting greater cooling during running. It also lets the upper
and lower body move
independently, “which allows you to use your upper body to counteract the
twisting forces from
your swinging legs,” Bramble says.
-- Shorter forearms in humans make it easier for the upper body to counterbalance
the lower body
during running. They also reduce the amount of muscle power needed to keep
the arms flexed
when running.
-- Human vertebrae and disks are larger in diameter relative to body mass
than are those in apes
or australopithecines. “This is related to shock absorption,” says Bramble.
“It allows the back to
take bigger loads when human runners hit the ground.”
-- The connection between the pelvis and spine is stronger and larger relative
to body size in
humans than in their ancestors, providing more stability and shock absorption
during running.
-- Human buttocks “are huge,” says Bramble. “Have you ever looked at an
ape? They have no
buns.” He says human buttocks “are muscles critical for stabilization in
running” because they
connect the femur – the large bone in each upper leg – to the trunk. Because
people lean forward
at the hip during running, the buttocks “keep you from pitching over on
your nose each time a foot
hits the ground.”
-- Long legs, which chimps and australopithecines lack, let humans to take
huge strides when
running, Bramble says. So do ligaments and tendons – including the long
Achilles tendon – which
act like springs that store and release mechanical energy during running.
The tendons and
ligaments also mean human lower legs that are less muscular and lighter,
requiring less energy to
move them during running.
-- Larger surface areas in the hip, knee and ankle joints, for improved
shock absorption during
running by spreading out the forces.
-- The arrangement of bones in the human foot creates a stable or stiff
arch that makes the whole
foot more rigid, so the human runner can push off the ground more efficiently
and utilize ligaments
on the bottom of the feet as springs.
-- Humans also evolved with an enlarged heel bone for better shock absorption,
as well as shorter
toes and a big toe that is fully drawn in toward the other toes for better
pushing off during running.
The study by Bramble and Lieberman concludes: “Today, endurance running
is primarily a form of
exercise and recreation, but its roots may be as ancient as the origin
of the human genus, and its
demands a major contributing factor to the human body form.”