A daily Black History Month fact that has nothing to do with George Washington Carver, MLK, Jr., or Harriet Tubman. Promise!

In honor of Fashion Week: Jan Matzeliger was born in Suriname to a Dutch father and an African mother in 1852. He moved to the United States at 18 and became a shoemaker. At the time, shoes were handmade…until Matzeliger revolutionized the process by inventing the shoe lasting machine. His machine attached the top of the shoe to the sole in less than a minute. Working by hand, a person could make 50 pairs of shoes a day, but his machine could produce between 150 to 700 pairs of shoes a day. When Matzeliger died of tuberculosis at the age of 37, he hadn't yet seen any profit from his invention, although he left lucrative stock to his friends and his church. Perhaps the most important result of his machine was that as production costs lowered, the prices of shoes dropped by 50 percent, making shoes far more affordable for the poor.

This concludes your daily dose of BHM.

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