55 Fun Facts About Wales

Which singer from Pontypridd had 1960s hits with 'It's Not Unusual' and 'Delilah'?

Tom Jones, then unknown, recorded 'It's Not Unusual' only as a demo for Sandie Shaw, who had been offered the song; when she heard it, she said he should sing it himself, and it became his first hit.

What does the Welsh word 'araf', painted on roads across Wales, tell drivers to do?

Slow down: 'araf' is painted beside 'slow' because road signs in Wales went bilingual after Welsh Language Society campaigners defaced English-only signs; the singer Dafydd Iwan was jailed over it in 1970.

Which Welsh border town, known for its second-hand bookshops, hosts a major literary festival every May and June?

Hay-on-Wye had its bookshops before its festival: Richard Booth opened the first in 1962, and on 1 April 1977 he declared the town an independent kingdom with himself as king, as a publicity stunt.

Which Cardiff-born forward retired in 2023 as the record goalscorer for the Wales men's football team?

Gareth Bale began his professional career as a left-back at Southampton, yet finished with 41 goals for Wales, having passed Ian Rush's record of 28 with a hat-trick against China in 2018.

The children's author Roald Dahl was born in Cardiff in 1916 to parents from which country?

Norway: Dahl's parents named him after the polar explorer Roald Amundsen and spoke Norwegian at home, and the children were baptised at the Norwegian Church in Cardiff.

Which two plants are worn as national emblems on Saint David's Day?

The leek and the daffodil are linked in Welsh, where one name for the daffodil is cenhinen Bedr, 'Peter's leek'; one legend has Welsh soldiers wearing leeks on their helmets in a battle against the Saxons.

Which prime minister popularised the daffodil as a Welsh emblem in the early 20th century?

David Lloyd George, the only prime minister whose first language was Welsh, took to wearing a daffodil on the patron saint's day and wore one at the 1911 investiture of the Prince of Wales.

What is the title of the de facto Welsh national anthem, sung before rugby and football internationals?

Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, 'Land of My Fathers', was written in Pontypridd in 1856; before a 1905 rugby match the Wales team is said to have answered New Zealand's haka by singing it, and the crowd joined in.

What is the name of the devolved Welsh Parliament?

The Senedd opened in 1999 as the National Assembly for Wales after voters backed devolution in 1997 by only 6,721 votes, having rejected it four to one in 1979; it took its present name in 2020.

Most of Wales's 3.1 million people live in which part of the country?

The south: the nineteenth-century boom of the coalfield and its ports caused a rapid growth in population there, and Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and the nearby valleys are the main centres today.

Welsh's closest living relatives are Cornish and which language of north-western France?

Breton: migrants from south-western Britain carried their speech to Brittany in the fifth and sixth centuries; at the 2021 census about 538,000 people in Wales, 17.8%, said they could speak Welsh.

Which Welsh upland range shares its name with the earliest period of the Palaeozoic era?

The Cambrian Mountains and the Cambrian period both take their name from Cambria, Latin for Wales; the later Ordovician and Silurian periods are named after the Ordovices and Silures tribes.

Which peninsula west of Swansea became Britain's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1956?

Gower holds a famous mistake: the 'Red Lady of Paviland', a skeleton stained with red ochre and found in a cave there in 1823, was in fact a young man buried tens of thousands of years ago.

What is the largest island off the Welsh mainland?

Anglesey, the Romans' Mona, was a stronghold of the druids; while the governor Suetonius Paulinus was away attacking it around AD 60, Boudica rose in revolt behind him in the south-east.

Which knife-edged ridge in Snowdonia, a famous scramble, is among the wettest places in the United Kingdom?

Crib Goch was carved by glaciers into an edge so narrow and exposed that it has killed even experienced mountaineers, and the national park authority calls it 'not a mountain for the inexperienced'.

Which bird of prey, once down to a few pairs in Wales, was voted its favourite bird?

The red kite, a common bird in medieval Britain, was persecuted until only a handful of pairs survived, all of them in Wales; it has since recovered and been named 'Bird of the Century'.

The gwyniad, a rare whitefish, is native only to which lake, the largest natural one in Wales?

Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake) is the gwyniad's only native home, and the fish is at risk there, partly because the ruffe, a species introduced to the lake, is thought to eat its eggs and fry.

Wales's 2021 World Heritage listing honours a north-western landscape shaped by quarrying what?

Slate: Penrhyn was the largest slate quarry in the world when a bitter three-year dispute began there in 1900, and many local families put signs in their windows reading 'There is no traitor in this house'.

Which 10th-century king is traditionally credited with codifying Welsh law at an assembly at Whitland?

Hywel Dda, 'Hywel the Good', gave his name to laws under which a killing was usually settled by compensation paid to the victim's family rather than by execution.

Which future king of England led the 1063 campaign that brought down Gruffudd ap Llywelyn, the only king of all Wales?

Harold Godwinson's attack by land and sea drove Gruffudd into Snowdonia, where he was killed and his head sent to Harold, who went on to marry Gruffudd's widow, Ealdgyth, at about the time he became king.

Which English king completed the conquest of Wales in 1283?

Edward I finished the conquest after Llywelyn ap Gruffudd was killed near Builth in December 1282 and his brother Dafydd was executed the next year, then ringed north Wales with stone castles to hold it.

Which Welsh leader was proclaimed Prince of Wales on 16 September 1400, starting a long revolt?

Owain Glyndŵr came to control most of Wales and summoned his own parliament; his strongholds had fallen by 1409, yet he fought on as late as 1412 and then vanishes from the record.

Which castle was the 1284 birthplace of the first English Prince of Wales?

Caernarfon Castle was only a year into building when the king's son was born there in April 1284; a famous legend has the king promising the Welsh a prince who spoke no English, then producing the baby.

Which monarch's Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542 annexed Wales to England?

Henry VIII's Acts of 1535 and 1542 extended English law and county administration to Wales, gave it members of Parliament and made English the sole language of its courts.

In the 1966 Aberfan disaster, a colliery spoil tip slid onto what?

A junior school: lessons had just begun at Pantglas Junior School when the tip engulfed it; the disaster killed 116 children and 28 adults, and the tribunal blamed the National Coal Board.

Which former miner from Tredegar launched the National Health Service in 1948 as Minister of Health?

Aneurin Bevan took his model from home: members of the Tredegar Medical Aid Society paid a regular contribution and got free care in return, an idea he extended to the whole of Britain.

Which north Wales town became the country's seventh city in 2022, in the Platinum Jubilee honours?

Wrexham won city status at its fourth attempt, after failed bids in 2000, 2002 and 2012, joining Cardiff, Swansea, Newport, Bangor, St Asaph and St Davids.

Which Welsh town became home to the Royal Mint ahead of Britain's change to decimal coins?

Llantrisant took over from the Mint's old home beside the Tower of London, and minting in the capital, which went back centuries, ended for good in 1975.

In 2008 Wales became the first nation in the world to be awarded what status?

Wales was declared the world's first Fair Trade Nation in June 2008 after meeting targets for Fairtrade goods in shops, schools and councils; Scotland followed in 2013.

Which river rises on Plynlimon and flows through Shrewsbury and Worcester to the Bristol Channel?

The Severn, Britain's longest river, rises close to the Wye on the slopes of Plynlimon, yet the two take separate routes and meet again only at Chepstow, where the Wye joins the Severn estuary.

Which king gives his name to the ancient earthwork near the Wales–England border?

Offa, the Mercian king of the later eighth century, is credited with the dyke: its ditch lies on the Welsh side and its bank on the Mercian side, the mark of a frontier laid out from the east.

The Snowdon Mountain Railway runs on a rack system and steam locomotives from which country?

Switzerland: the line uses Roman Abt's Swiss rack system and engines built in Winterthur; on opening day one locomotive lost the rack and fell down the mountain, so a gripper system was added.

The Italianate folly village of Portmeirion was designed by which architect?

Sir Clough Williams-Ellis bought the Aber Iâ estate near Penrhyndeudraeth in 1925 and built Portmeirion there until 1975, denying it was modelled on Portofino.

Portmeirion is most famous as 'the Village' in which 1960s TV series?

The Prisoner (1967–68), created by and starring Patrick McGoohan as Number Six, shot its Village exteriors at Portmeirion, which the series only credited in its final episode.

Which bird, said to have settled on Saint David's shoulder as he preached at Brefi, became his emblem?

A white dove is said to have settled on his shoulder at the Synod of Brefi, where by tradition the ground also rose beneath his feet so the crowd could hear him; the village is now Llanddewi Brefi.

Saint David's monastic rule required his monks to pull the plough themselves and drink only what?

Water: the rule earned his monks the name 'watermen' and David the nickname Dewi Ddyfrwr, the Water Drinker; they could own nothing, and even saying 'my book' counted as an offence.

The two most important events at an eisteddfod are the crowning ceremony and what?

The chairing of the bard honours the best poem in strict metre; in 1917 the winner, Hedd Wyn, had been killed in Flanders six weeks earlier, so the empty chair was draped in a black sheet.

The first documented eisteddfod was held in 1176 under Prince Rhys ap Gruffudd at which castle?

Rhys ap Gruffudd, the Lord Rhys, hosted the first recorded eisteddfod at Cardigan Castle at Christmas 1176, with contests for poets and musicians; the modern Gorsedd dates only from Iolo Morganwg's 1792 invention.

What does the word 'eisteddfod' literally mean?

Sitting-together is the literal sense, from eistedd, 'to sit', and bod, 'to be'; Welsh migrants carried the custom abroad, and in Australia 'eisteddfod' is now an everyday word for a performing-arts contest.

Which traditional Welsh dish is made from an edible seaweed?

Laverbread contains no bread: laver seaweed is boiled for several hours into a dark green purée, then often rolled in oatmeal and fried, and eaten with bacon and cockles at breakfast.

What is cawl, the traditional Welsh dish?

A lamb stew is what cawl usually means today, though older recipes used salted bacon or beef; it was once served as two courses, the thickened broth first and the meat and vegetables after.

The collection of medieval Welsh prose tales drawn from the White and Red Books is known as what?

The Mabinogion owes its title to a scribal error: 'mabynnogyon' appears once in a manuscript as a mistaken plural, and Lady Charlotte Guest's Victorian edition carried it as the name of the whole collection.

Who published the first complete Welsh translation of the Bible in 1588?

William Morgan was a parish priest when he published the first complete Welsh Bible in 1588, building on William Salesbury's 1567 New Testament; it set the standard for literary Welsh, and he was made a bishop in 1595.

Which Dylan Thomas work was first broadcast in 1954?

Under Milk Wood, set in the fictional town of Llareggub, went out on the BBC on 25 January 1954 with Richard Burton as First Voice; Thomas never heard it, having died in New York two months earlier.

Which Welsh-language television channel began broadcasting in 1982?

S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru) launched on 1 November 1982, a day before Channel 4, after Gwynfor Evans threatened a hunger strike to hold the government to its promised Welsh-language channel.

Which bowed six-stringed lyre is a traditional Welsh instrument?

The crwth, a bowed lyre with six strings, two of them lying off the fingerboard, was played in Wales until about 1800; its players live on in the surnames Crowther and Crowder.

A Welsh-speaking colony called Y Wladfa was founded in 1865 in which country?

Argentina: about 150 settlers sailed on the Mimosa in 1865 to found a colony in Patagonia's Chubut valley, where they hoped Welsh speech and culture could survive away from the influence of English.

Which Welsh club beat Arsenal to win the FA Cup in 1927?

Cardiff City won 1–0 when Hughie Ferguson's shot slipped through the hands of Arsenal's Welsh goalkeeper Dan Lewis, who blamed his greasy new jersey; no club from outside England had won the Cup before.

At which tournament did the Wales football team first reach a semi-final?

Euro 2016 was Wales's first major tournament since the 1958 World Cup, yet they came from a goal down to beat Belgium 3–1 in the quarter-final before losing 2–0 to Portugal in the semi-final.

Which Welsh rugby region was formed in 2003 by merging the clubs Neath and Swansea?

Ospreys: Welsh rugby swapped its leading clubs for five regional sides in 2003, joining Neath and Swansea; the Celtic Warriors were disbanded after a single season, leaving four regions.

Which designer, born in Dowlais, Merthyr Tydfil, built a worldwide fashion and furnishings brand on floral prints?

Laura Ashley began in 1953 by printing scarves in a London flat on equipment devised by her husband Bernard; the couple then moved to Wales, where their first shop opened in 1961.

Which public service in Wales was still run from Westminster in 2025, unlike health and schools?

Policing: unlike in Scotland and Northern Ireland, justice and policing in Wales were still reserved to Westminster in 2025, so the four Welsh forces came under the Home Office in London.

Which is the largest by area of the 22 council areas Wales has had since 1996?

Powys is both the largest and the most sparsely populated of the 22: the 2021 census counted only about 133,000 people there, and its biggest settlement is the town of Newtown.

In which town did the University College of Wales open in 1872?

The University College of Wales opened at Aberystwyth in October 1872 in a seafront building begun as a hotel; Cardiff (1883) and Bangor (1884) followed, and the three formed the University of Wales in 1893.

Which Welsh-born claimant won the English crown at Bosworth in 1485 under a red dragon standard?

Henry Tudor, born in Pembroke Castle, landed in Pembrokeshire and marched through Wales to the battle; after his victory the red dragon standard was carried in state to St Paul's Cathedral.