Killer shoes worked for Romans, but were no match for
Bond http://www.nationalpost.com/news/ story.html?f=/stories/20011227/968822.html Joseph Brean NATIONAL POST Military-grade explosive packed into
high-top sneakers nearly brought down a passenger jet last Saturday, marking the
latest episode in the bizarre history of shoes designed to kill. Far from a
novel technique, deadly footwear was presaged in a Federal Aviation
Administration warning early this month, when airports were told that terrorists
might hide weapons in their shoes. In October, a man smuggled a knife past
security at Washington's Dulles airport in precisely this manner. Killer shoes
date back at least 2,000 years, when Roman soldiers affixed spikes to their
shoes to skewer their enemies with one kick. The unwieldy spike, often eight
centimetres long, also helped to balance the heavily armoured soldiers, and the
design persisted for centuries. In modern times, though, the ingenuity of
weaponized footwear has been largely cancelled out by its
impracticality.
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