What was the world’s first sneaker? Was it made in the 1830s, when the UK’s Liverpool Rubber Company fused canvas tops to rubber soles, creating beach footwear for the Victorian middle class? Or was it a few decades later, about 1870, with the invention of the tennis shoe? If you’re especially definitionally generous, perhaps it was back in the Athenian golden age when Olympians began wearing sandals to protect their feet while running.
