Ten Facts That Might Interest You

1. Residents of Laugharne have included Dylan Thomas, rhinos, cave lions, mammoths and hippos (as excavations in the 1960s of the 30 metre long Coygan Cave proved).

2. Most of Wales was covered in ice as high as Snowdon (1,000 metres of ice and snow covered all of what is now Wales, excepting the far south, during the last ice age ending less than 20,000 years ago).

3. Wales' first farmers came from Brittany (proof comes from analysis of a tooth found under a long cairn near Talgarth dated to within 70 years of 5,770 years ago, which carbon dating proved belonged to someone brought up in Brittany, yet who lived most of their life in Wales).

4. Welsh princes explored the heart of America over 300 years before Columbus (in 1170, Prince Madoc, his brother and about 100 other family members and retainers, escaped internecine battles to sail two ships across the unknown Atlantic to America, then travelled up the Mississippi to settle on the Great Plains. Queen Elizabeth 1 used this to justify her claims to America, and President Thomas Jefferson instructed Lewis & Clark to find evidence, but no definitive evidence has ever been found).

5. The world's first celebrity actress was Welsh (In the First Age of Gossip - facilitated by scarrilous caricatures in single sheet pamphlets, the X of their day - Sarah Siddons, born in Brecon in 1755, became the world's first celebrity actress, famous for her Lady Macbeth. When she shrieked in the part she was playing, all the audience would shriek along with her!).

6. The highest mountain in the world is Welsh (George Everest was born in Crickhowell in 1790, became Surveyor General of India, named Himalayan mountains by alphabet letters so initially identified Mount Everest as Peak B. He never identified it as the highest mountain, although his successor did, and proposed naming it after George).

7. The first aeroplane was patented, made and flown by a Welshman 7 years before the Wright Brothers (Few have ever heard of William Frost, but he patented an aeroplane in 1894, made it himself, and flew it on Saudersfoot beach 7 years before, and 12 times further, than the Wright Brothers).

8. The Ukrainian city of Donetsk was founded by a Welshman (John Hughes from Merthyr Tydfil developed a method for steel plating ships and fortresses, so when in 1879 he got a huge contract from the Russian government, he filled 8 ships with equipment, miners, steel workers and their families, and built factories and dug mines around a village he named after himself, Hughesovska, which became Stalina after the Russian Revolution, then in 1961 Donetsk, a city of one million people in Ukraine).

9. A Welshman invented lawn tennis (His name was Major Walter Clopton Wingfield, and his initial name for the game was Sphairistikè. His first tennis sets cost today's equivalent of £1,500, which partly explains why it was initially a game for aristocrats).

10. The best ever Welsh footballer was never ever booked (John Charles was said to be the best centre back, the best centre forward, and, according to Sir Bobby Robson, the best of men. He doubled the transfer record (to £65,000!) when he moved from Leeds to Juventus, yet was grateful to become manager of the New Inn on Elland Road when he retired. International referee Clive Thomas said 'If you had 22 players of John's calibre, there would be no need for referees – only time-keepers.').