Short answers, pulled from the story.
Shropshire is a ceremonial county in the West Midlands of England, on the border with Wales. It is bordered by Cheshire to the north-east, Staffordshire to the east, Worcestershire to the south-east, Herefordshire to the south, and the Welsh principal areas of Powys and Wrexham to the west and north-west. The county covers 3,487 square kilometres.
William Penny Brookes, from Much Wenlock, founded the Wenlock Olympian Games, which began in 1850 and are still held annually during the second weekend in July. Much Wenlock is regarded as a birthplace of the modern Olympic movement.
The world's first iron-framed building was constructed at the Flaxmill Maltings in Shrewsbury. The construction techniques developed there were necessary preconditions for the steel-framed skyscrapers built in later centuries.
The area around Coalbrookdale is regarded as one of the birthplaces of the Industrial Revolution and has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Ironbridge Gorge, where the River Severn cuts through the county, was the site of pivotal advances in iron and industrial technology.
Shropshire is widely believed to have influenced Tolkien's landscape of the Shire in The Lord of the Rings. Specifically, the Wrekin hill has been associated with the Lonely Mountain and the town of Ellesmere with Laketown.
Shropshire derives from the Old English Scrobbesbyrigscir, meaning "Shrewsburyshire" or "the shire of the fortified place in the scrublands." The county was first recorded under that name in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle entry for 1006. The abbreviation Salop, which comes from the Anglo-French Salopesberia, was the county's official name from 1972 until 1980, when it was changed back to Shropshire following a local campaign.