Flip-flops
Flip-flops are a type of light sandal, typically worn as a form of casual footwear. They consist of a flat sole held loosely on the foot by a Y-shaped strap known as a toe thong that passes between the first and second toes and around both sides of the foot or can be a rigid base with a strap across all the toes.
This style of footwear has been worn by the people of many cultures throughout the world, originating as early as the ancient Egyptians in 1,500 B.C.
In the United States the flip-flop has been popularized from the Japanese zōri, after World War II as soldiers brought them back from Japan. They became a prominent unisex summer footwear[1] starting in the 1960s.
Although the Beach Boys 1964 song All Summer Long mentions "T-shirts, cut-offs, and a pair of thongs", the term flip-flop has been used in American and British English since the 1960s to describe the thong or no-heel-strap sandal. This type of footwear is also known as "slides" or "sliders".[2] "Flip-flop" may be an onomatopoeia of the sound made by the sandals when walking in them.[3] They are also called thongs (sometimes pluggers[4]) in Australia,[5] jandals (originally a trademarked name derived from "Japanese sandals") in New Zealand,[6] slops or “plakkies” in South Africa[7] and Zimbabwe, and tsinelas in the Philippines (or, in some Visayan localities, "smagol", from the word smuggled).
Throughout the world, they are known by a variety of other names, including slippers in the Philippines, Hawaii, Bahamas, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Thong sandals have been worn for thousands of years, dating back to pictures of them in ancient Egyptian murals from 4,000 BC. A pair found in Europe was made of papyrus leaves and dated to be approximately 1,500 years old. These early versions of flip-flops were made from a wide variety of materials. Ancient Egyptian sandals were made from papyrus and palm leaves. The Maasai people of Africa made them out of rawhide. In India, they were made from wood. In China and Japan, rice straw was used. The leaves of the sisal plant were used to make twine for sandals in South America, while the natives of Mexico used the yucca plant.[8]
_(cropped).jpg/440px-Gone_Barefootin'_free_creative_commons_(4615287172)_(cropped).jpg)
_(cropped).jpg){kind=link}
