Chopine Chopine A chopine is a type of women's platform shoe that was popular in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Chopines were originally used as a patten, clog, or overshoe to protect the shoes and dress from mud and street soil. Chopines were popularly worn in Venice by both courtesans and patrician women from ca. 1400–1700. Besides their practical uses, the height of the chopine became a symbolic reference to the cultural and social standing of the wearer; the higher the chopine, the higher the status of the wearer. High chopines allowed a woman to tower over others. During the
Steam shovel winch shovels. Many steam shovels remained at work on the railways of developing nations until diesel engines supplanted them. Most have since been scrapped. Large, multi-ton mining shovels still use the cable-lift shovel arrangement. In the 1950s and 1960s Marion Shovel built massive stripping shovels for coal operations in the Eastern US. Shovels of note were the Marion 360, the Marion 5900, and the largest shovel ever built, Marion 6360 "The Captain" – with a bucket – while Bucyrus constructed one of the most famous monsters: the Big Brutus, the largest still in existence. The "GEM of Egypt" (GEM standing