Last Thursday and Friday, a diving team swept a flooded mine in Grand Rapids, Minnesota for a missing pair of the ruby-red shoes Judy Garland’s Dorothy wore in “The Wizard Of Oz”. Oz-heads know there were at least four to twenty (?) pairs of the shiny shoes used during the actual filming of WOO; One was stolen from a private collection in 2005 and there have since been rumors they were chucked into this old mine now filled with water in Grand Rapids; Minnesota not Michigan.

Wednesday would have been Garland’s 93rd birthday; She was born in Grand Rapids and the dive itself was part of an annual event thrown by the Judy Garland Museum called The Wizard Of Oz Festival. Footage from the scuba mission (which did not yield the slippers) will be used in an upcoming documentary titled “The Slippers”. If you were there you have the chance to be in the final film.

The museum puts on a surprising amount of family-friendly “Oz” and Garland-history events; They’re also asking you, dear readers and red-slipper aficionados, to keep an eye out for these missing iconic heels.