23 January: Measure Your Feet Day

Today is Measure Your Feet Day. 10 facts about feet.

1. A human foot has 26 bones (52 bones in both feet, almost a quarter of all the bones we have), 19 muscles, 10 tendons (including the Achilles tendon which is the strongest tendon in the human body) and 107 ligaments. There are also 8,000 nerves in our feet which is probably why feet are so ticklish, and 250,000 sweat glands capable of producing half a pint of sweat a day.
2. The bones in a baby's foot are mostly cartilage. Our foot bones don't harden completely until the age of around 21.
3. 20-30% of people have a second toe which is longer than their first. Enough that the condition has been given a name - Morton's Toe.
4. One or two people in every thousand is born with more than their fair share of toes (and/or fingers). This condition is called polydactylism.
5. Over the course of a normal day, your feet take a cumulative force of about 200 tons. As you walk, each foot takes one and a half times your body weight. When you run, that increases to up to five times your weight.
6. Early humans had thicker and stronger toes than we do, because they walked barefoot. Go back even further and the big toe was like a thumb on the foot, which was useful to our tree climbing ancestors. Even today if a person loses one of their thumbs, transplanting one of their big toes onto their hand to replace it is an option that is open to them. Our feet continue to adapt. As humans in the Western world get bigger, their shoe sizes are getting larger, too.
7. Women are four times more likely to have problems with their feet, which is put down to wearing high heels.
8. Toenails grow at a rate of 1mm a month, much slower than fingernails. It takes five or six months, at least, to grow a completely new toenail. While on the subject of toenails, the record for the longest toenails is held by Louise Hollis of California, who has been growing her toenails since 1982. By 1991 she had toenails that were six inches long.
9. Podophilia is another word for a foot fetish. The opposite, feeling extreme revulsion at the very thought of feet is podophobia.
10. In 2003, scientists debunked the myth that there is a correlation between the size of a man's feet and the size of his penis. It is possible for a man to tell by looking at a woman's feet, whether she's interested in him or not. If her feet are positioned out and away from her body, he might just have pulled. If her feet are crossed or tucked beneath her, he may as well forget it. This phenomenon was not observed in men, however.

See also, Shoes and Socks.

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Another collection of short stories, even more murder and mayhem with carol singers, an orchestra out for revenge, a sinister magic stone and a haunted mansion.

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A Tale of Two Sisters

During a battle with supervillains, a horrific accident leaves the Warner family with no option but to believe their youngest daughter, Jessica, is dead. It doesn't occur to them that the bad guys could, or would, save her.

Jessica wakes up with no memory of who she is or how she came to be on a space station with two bionic legs, a bionic arm and a bionic eye. She is told her family abandoned her and is sent back to Earth with a mission - to kill them. While Jessica wants to kill her family, along with the twin boys who once rejected her, she knows what the Alliance of Supervillains are asking her to do is a suicide mission. She decides to get her revenge in her own way.

As Jessica puts the first part of her revenge plan in motion, she finds herself with an agonising decision to make. Before she can decide, the Alliance come for her, determined to make her do their bidding. This time, it's the Alliance who leave her, crippled and at the mercy of the Warner family, who have no idea who the Alliance's Black Rose really is.

Jessica finds herself having to re-think her decisions in light of what she now learns about her family, the Alliance, the twins, and herself. It would appear the Alliance have left her with an unwanted and permanent reminder of her time with them. Or have they?

Jessica's older sister, Jill, knows her destiny is to be a doctor and specialise in bionics and genetic variant medicine. She is also hopelessly in love with Christopher, Crown Prince of Galorvia. Can their romance survive the lies Christopher told her when they were both at school, an unplanned pregnancy and Sophie, the wannabe princess who comes between them?

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