Judy, whose maiden name was Sanborn, came from an old New England family in Exeter, New Hampshire, where her grandfather had owned a shoe factory.

NEWYORKER: A Loaded Gun

"They are hard workers and obedient employees, " Zeng Xiangbiao, a shoe factory owner in Dongguan, told a Chinese reporter in a familiar refrain on immigrant labor.

FORBES: Heads Up

"Kinky Boots, " which opens April 4, is based on an obscure 2005 British film about a British shoe factory on the brink of ruin that retrofits itself into a maker of fetishistic footwear for drag queens.

WSJ: Cyndi Lauper just wants to have fun on Broadway

Based on an obscure 2005 British film about a British shoe factory on the brink of ruin that retrofits itself into a maker of fetishistic footwear, this is a musical that comes alive when the lithe and towering men in heels appear.

WSJ: Review: Sweet 'Kinky Boots' an ode to love, shoes

He left school at 16 to join the accounts department of a Northampton shoe factory, but became interested in economics through reading John Maynard Keynes.

ECONOMIST: A remarkable colleague

Ethiopia's comparative advantage in wages, productivity, and natural resources has led the Huajian Group, a Chinese shoe maker, to build a factory in Ethiopia in three months, with two production lines starting in January 2012, exporting 20, 000 pairs of shoes a month and creating some 550 jobs.

CNN: Opinion: Could Africa be world's next manufacturing hub?

They included a cook, a shoe saleswoman, a student and a bottle factory driver.

BBC: Changing China seen from the 'hard seats' of a train

She grew up in Northampton, where the girls' father ran a men's shoe factory, GT Hawkins, and after school went to the Buckingham Palace College of Domestic Science.

BBC: Guinness World Record holder Marjorie Ruddle, 105, dies