Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir, "Becoming," that when she met Queen Elizabeth in 2009, they bonded over both wearing uncomfortable high heels.
"Forget that she sometimes wore a diamond crown and that I'd flown to London on a presidential jet; we were two tired ladies oppressed by our shoes," she wrote. "I then did what's instinctive to me anytime I feel connected to a new person, which is to express my feelings outwardly. I laid a hand affectionately across her shoulder."
She didn't realize until later that she had committed "what would be deemed as an epic faux pas," as one isn't supposed to touch the Queen.
"If I hadn't done the proper thing at Buckingham Palace, I had at least done the human thing," she wrote. "I daresay the Queen was okay with it, too, because when I touched her, she only pulled closer, resting a gloved hand lightly on the small of my back."