Johnny Carson voice “I did not know that!”
Old New York joke: Why do (choose your ethnicity) wear pointy shoes?
To kill cockroaches in corners. DnR
Skechers. You can have my Skechers when you pry them from my cold dead feet.
At least they’ll be broken in.
By contrast, I got a pair of Starter shoes cheap recently, and figured that I’d be ready for when my then-current pair wore out. After less than a dozen wearings, they weren’t broken in yet, but they were falling apart: The sole was separating from the shoe, and a piece of tread fell off the sole entirely.
IIRC, the army brogans were supposed to be worn on alternate feet each day to even up the wear.
one man’s horse is another one’s monster-truck
… and every other week you’d swap with the guy next to you … to even out and compensate for gait, bonespurs *) …etc…
*) the people suffering tremendously from bonespurs were - quite rightly so - excluded from service by the ministery of war
Getting back to the original question, this very roughly true…ish.
The Munson last (1912) and the parallel Navy last were one of the first mass produced shoe designs which made any concession to wearability.