When did people start wearing socks?
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Make every day more interesting. Each day a surprising fact opens a world of fascinating information for you to explore. Did you know that….? 
| Original photo by Africa Studio/ Unsplash |
| The oldest example of knitted socks comes from ancient Egypt. | Around 300 CE, in the Roman Egyptian city of Antinoöpolis, a child stuffed their feet into a pair of striped wool socks. The child's name has long been lost to history, but one of the socks is now likely the oldest piece of knitted footwear ever discovered. Pulled from a 1,700-year-old refuse heap during a British excavation in Egypt in 1913–14, the socks now live at the British Museum in London. In 2018, they underwent multispectral imaging that revealed they were once as colorful as some of the cotton creations that adorn our feet today. Scientists found tiny traces of three plant-based dyes (red, blue, and yellow) that ancient Egyptians used on the wool to create seven beautiful shades of stripes. The Egyptians also used a single-needle looping technique, now called "nålbinding," to create the socks. The technique predates both modern knitting and crocheting, and is named for the many ancient examples that have been found in modern Norway.
Today, some consider pairing socks with sandals a fashion faux pas, but ancient cultures around the Mediterranean felt differently. These particular Egyptian socks had two compartments for toes, and were specifically designed to fit sandals by separating the big toe from its companions. Centuries earlier, ancient Greeks wore socks made from animal pelts along with their sandals. Turns out pairing socks and Birkenstocks may be one of humanity's oldest footwear traditions.
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 | | The Boston Red Sox were the first team to show off their socks as part of the uniform. | | |
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| The Boston Red Sox were the first team to show off their socks as part of the uniform. |  |  |
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| The first mention of socks comes from Greek poet __ in the eighth century BCE. |  |
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 | Numbers Don't Lie |
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 | | Number of stitches made per minute by the world's fastest knitter | | 118 |
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| | | Pairs of socks made annually in Zhejiang Province, China (about 30% of the world's socks) | | 25 billion |
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| | Year (CE) Roman Emperor Hadrian founded Antinoöpolis to honor his companion Antinoüs | | 130 |
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| | | Amount (in feet) of cotton thread used to make the world's largest sock | | 42,001 |
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 | Knitting machines kick-started the Industrial Revolution. |
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| Every revolution starts somewhere. For the Industrial Revolution, that "somewhere" was knitting — specifically knitting socks and stockings. Around 1589, William Lee, a member of the clergy in Calverton, England (a town admired for its wool), invented a machine that automated knitting stockings. Reportedly, he did it so that his love interest would stop ignoring him in favor of her knitting. Regardless, his stocking creations eventually wound up in the hands of Queen Elizabeth I. While Lee's machine was a technical success, it created a poorer-quality stocking, and the queen wasn't a fan. Because of its less-than-perfect texture (and hoping to keep countless hand knitters employed), Elizabeth I denied Lee's patent for the machine. Undeterred, in 1605 Lee crossed the Channel and found success knitting stockings for the French elite. In the mid-17th century, Oliver Cromwell wholeheartedly embraced Lee's machine, and the mechanization of the textile industry, one of the first pieces of the Industrial Revolution, began in earnest. | | |
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posted by June Lesley at 5:13 AM
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