People are just discovering the mind-blowing reason shoelaces have plastic on the ends of them

EVER wondered why on earth there’s a plastic bit at either end of your shoe laces?

Well Reddit have, and for a random fact to impress your mates in the pub with… it’s called an aglet.

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Did you know that the plastic bit on the end of your shoe lace is called an aglet?[/caption]

The history behind the popular shoe feature may be a little bit knotty.

Some historians say wealthy people in the Roman era had aglets made from brass or silver.

However, it is widely thought they became a common shoelace feature from 1790 thanks to a man named Harvey Kennedy.

He had tried to find a way of preventing laces from fraying, and to make lacing up shoes easier with a more stream-lined tip.

Aglets may seem simple and something we take for granted now, but Harvey ended up making a whopping £1.8million from his design, according to HuffPost.

Most shoelaces today have plastic or metal aglets, but many internet users admitted they had never known the name or given them much thought.

One said: “I never knew that thing had a name, learn something new every day.”

In a separate comical Twitter post people were left confused about what the word “aglet” meant.

One guessed: “Something to do with a needle”, while another added: “No idea… I’m guessing a baby of some sort of animal.”

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It is widely thought they became a common shoelace feature from 1790[/caption]