Located in the Eastern area. Bedfordshire (Beds), once an ancient county, is now bordered by Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire. The first recorded use of the name was in 1011 as "Bedanfordscir," meaning the shire or county of Bedford, which itself means "Beda's ford" (river crossing).
","Shropshire or Salop is a landlocked historic county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Wales to the west and the English counties of Cheshire, Staffordshire, Worcestershire, and Herefordshire.","Ireland was first settled around 6000 BC by a race of Middle Stone Age hunter-gatherers who lived there. They tended to hunt such creatures as the megaceros, a giant variety of deer so large that their antlers spanned ten feet.","Founded in 1788, New South Wales (NSW) was the first penal colony for England. British explorer, Captain James Cook, first discovered the east coast of Australia while attempting to examine the planet Venus in order to determine the distance from the Earth to the Sun in 1770, he first named it New Wales, then later New South Wales.","The First Fleet departed from Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, on May 13, 1787 and sailed for around 250 days. The fleet was comprised of eleven ships - six prison ships, three equipment ships, and two navy ships, Sirius and Supply. After an extremely long journey, the First Fleet finally arrived at Botany Bay, located in Sydney, New South Wales, between January 18 and 20, 1788.","Dutch navigator Willem Jansz aboard the Duyfken was the first European to land in waht is now known as Australia in 1606. He charted much of the Gulf of Carpentaria, located on the northern coast of Australia. In 1616, another Dutch captain, Dirk Hartog, landed on the west coast of Australia near Shark Bay.",null],"lnksHoverSummaryImgURL":[null,"/cdn/webp/i/kb/200w/books2.webp?pos=floatRight","","","/cdn/webp/i/kb/200w/books.webp?pos=floatRight","/cdn/webp/i/kb/200w/wales_pembrokeshire.webp?pos=floatRight","/cdn/webp/i/kb/200w/Bedfordshire England.webp?pos=floatRight","/cdn/webp/i/kb/200w/Shropshire England.webp?pos=floatRight","","","/cdn/webp/i/kb/200w/first_fleet_ship.webp?pos=floatRight","",null],"mode":"f","s":"Bown","sU":"BOWEN","oC":"WA","o":"Welsh","o2":null,"cOk":true,"c":"/dpreview/BOWEN/WA/Bown/family-crest-coat-of-arms.png","c2":"/dpreview/ANDERSON/SC/Anderson/family-crest-coat-of-arms.png","v":"1","sections":["","SettlersUS","SettlersCA","SettlersAU","SettlersNZ","SettlersZA","SettlersWI","Settlers","ContemporaryNotable","ContemporaryNotables","HistoricEvents","RelatedStories","Motto","SuggestedReading","Citations",""]}