Comarca del Arlanza is a comarca located south-east of the province of Burgos in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is bounded on the north by the Odra-Pisuerga and the Alfoz de Burgos, south by the Ribera del Duero, on the east by the province of Palencia and west by the Sierra de la Demanda.
The comarca capital is Lerma.
The waters of the river Arlanza, rising in the pines forest of Quintanar de la Sierra, running from east to west because the land falls from heights such as Peñas de Cervera (Mount Valdosa, 1412 m) and the mountain range The Mamblas (1372 m) to the border with Palencia, give name to the comarca.
The Arlanza zone was repopulated mainly by Astur, Cantabri, Visigothic and Mozarab peoples in the mid-ninth century, after the border of the County of Castile and the Kingdom of Córdoba reached the river Duero.
A shire is a traditional term for a division of land, found in the United Kingdom and Australia. The word derives from the Old English scir, itself a derivative of the Proto-Germanic skizo (cf. Old High German scira), meaning care or official charge. In Britain, "shire" is the original term for what is usually known now as a county; the word county having been introduced at the Norman Conquest of England. The two are nearly synonymous. Although in modern British usage counties are referred to as "shires" mainly in poetic contexts, terms such as Shire Hall remain common. Shire also remains a common part of many county names.
In some rural parts of Australia, a shire is a local government area; however, in Australia it is not synonymous with a "county", which is a lands administrative division. Individually, or as a suffix in Scotland and in the far northeast of England, the word is pronounced /ˈʃaɪər/. As a suffix in an English or Welsh place name, it is in most regions pronounced /ʃɜːr/, or sometimes /ʃɪər/. (In south-east England the /r/ is dropped in accordance with normal regional phonology, so that (for instance) "Berkshire" becomes /ˈbɑːkʃə/.)
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire refers to an area settled exclusively by Hobbits and largely removed from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is located in the northwest of the continent, in the large region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor. Its name in Westron was Sûza "Shire" or Sûzat "The Shire". Its name in Sindarin was i Drann.
According to Tolkien, the Shire measured 40 leagues (193 km, 120 miles) from the Far Downs in the west to the Brandywine Bridge in the east, and 50 leagues (241 km, 150 miles) from the northern moors to the marshes in the south. This is confirmed in an essay by Tolkien on translating The Lord of the Rings, where he describes the Shire as having an area of 18,000 square miles (47,000 km2).
The original territory of the Shire was bounded on the east by the Baranduin River, on the north by uplands rising to the old centre of Arnor, on the west by the White Downs, and on the south by marshland south of the River Shirebourn. After the original settlement, hobbits also expanded to the east into Buckland between the Baranduin and the Old Forest, and (much later) to the west into the Westmarch between the White Downs and the Tower Hills.
Shire Plc is a Jersey-registered, Irish-headquartered global specialty biopharmaceutical company. Originating in the United Kingdom with a large operational base in the United States, its brands and products include Vyvanse, Adderall XR, Intuniv, Lialda, Pentasa, Fosrenol, Replagal, Elaprase, VPRIV, Firazyr and Dermagraft.
Shire has its primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It had a market capitalisation of approximately £23 billion as of 3 February 2015, making it the 22nd-largest capitalisation on the London Stock Exchange. Shire has a secondary listing on NASDAQ.
Shire was founded by Harry Stratford, Dr James Murray, Dennis Stephens, Peter Moriarty, and Geoff Hall in 1986. It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1996. Shire's initial products were calcium supplements (Calcichew-D3) for patients seeking to treat or prevent osteoporosis. In 1997 the company acquired Pharmavene for £105 million in order to access Pharmavenes drug delivery methods. Later in the same year Shire acquired Richwood Pharmaceutical Company, forming Shire-Richwood Inc.