Stiletto for ranging distance. The stiletto was later adopted throughout Italy as the favored offensive thrusting knife ("arma manesca") of the medieval assassin,<ref name="ATK"/ so much so that it was invariably prohibited as a treacherous weapon ("arma insidiosa") by the authorities of the day. The stiletto was preferred by assassins as it was silent, easily concealed inside a sleeve or jacket, and featured a blade capable of easily penetrating the heavy leather and fabric clothing of the day, while inflicting mortal wounds that tended to bleed less than those made by other types of knives. In Italy, the stiletto began to
Stiletto heel extremely slender original Italian-style stiletto heels of the late 1950s and very early 1960s were no more than in diameter for much of their length, although the heel sometimes flared out a little at the top-piece (tip). After their demise in the mid-late 1960s, such slender heels were difficult to find until recently due to changes in the way heels were mass-produced. Relatively thin high heels were certainly around in the late 19th century, as numerous fetish drawings attest. Firm photographic evidence exists in the form of photographs of Parisian singer Mistinguett from the 1940s. These shoes were designed by