How can Cinderella dance in glass slippers?

She probably can’t.

The reason this fairy tale princess has glass slippers is due to a translation error.

Hundreds of “Cinderella” stories exist, in many different cultures, dating back as far as the ninth century.  However, not one of the tales featured glass slippers until Charles Perrault, in his 1697 anthology of fairy tales, confused an old french word for “fur” with a word meaning “glass.”

In most of the stories, the shoes are valuable and remarkable, but they’re usually fur or some other wearable material.  Perrault’s version, however, is the one on which Disney based its Cinderella film and the one most of us remember.

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