I can’t tell you the amount of things I’ve learned, nor how my horizons have been broadened, simply by ensuring that I try to go to places I’ve never been before. In doing so, I find I not only grow as a person, but also become clued-in on aspects of various cultures that I never would have been able to learn from a textbook or TV program.

If you consider yourself – excuse the phrase – a citizen of the world, you’ll be interested in the fascinating ways people from different parts of the globe differ from one another. We all have our quirky customs, those that are commonly steeped in one tradition or another and oftentimes make for interesting reading.

On today’s agenda is something that caught my eye when I was journeying across the mid-west of America last summer. There I was, minding my own business in the back seat of a car, when I noticed a cowboy boot left on a fence post.

I then saw another a few miles down the road, and then another about an hour after that. Too many to be coincidence, in any case, and something I decided to read up when I returned home.

Low and behold, it turns out that leaving old boots actually serves a significant purpose: there are a few reasons cowboys, farmers and ranchers have long chosen to display them in this way.