Born on this day 1893 in Cardiff

David Ivor Davies, who was better known as Ivor Novello - composer, singer and actor who was one of the 20th century's most popular entertainers.

 The songs that he is best remembered for, are "Keep the Home Fires Burning", enormously popular during the First World War and ‘ We'll gather lilacs’, written as World War II drew to its close.

After the war, Novello wrote music for several successful musical comedies and briefly went to Hollywood, but after falling out with the director, D.W Griffith, he returned to Britain where his success continued, with him writing his own West End musicals.

Novello died in 1951 and the Ivor Novello Awards for songwriting were established in 1955 in his memory.  In St Paul's, Covent Garden, known as the actors' church, a panel was installed to commemorate him and to mark the 21st anniversary of his death, a memorial stone was unveiled in St Paul's Cathedral.  

Born on this day 1810 in Brecon  

John Evan Thomas,  sculptor, notable for his sculpture in Brecknock Museum of the Death of Tewdrig, which is associated with the Welsh national revival of the 1830s and 1840s and  depicts the dying fifth-century king Tewdrig, saint of Glamorgan and for his two bronze statues in the House of Lords, of Henry de Loundres and William, Earl of Pembroke, both signees of Magna Carta. 

Thomas studied in London and Europe, before returning to Brecon and becoming High Sheriff of Brecknockshire, his many works include those in Wales, such as the Duke of Wellington in the centre of Brecon, his statuary in Brecon Cathedral, Sir Charles Morgan at Newport, the John Henry Vivian at Swansea, the 1865 Prince Consort on Castle Heights, Tenby and the Second Marquess of Bute in Cardiff city centre.  

In January 1870, Francis Kilvert began his famous diary, 

Francis Kilvert was an English clergyman, who became a rural curate in Langley Burrell, Wiltshire and Clyro, Radnorshire, before becoming Vicar of St Harmon, Radnorshire and Bredwardine, Herefordshire.  During this time he kept a diary, which when published over fifty years after his death, give an enchanting portrait of rural Britain in the 19th century.

There is now a Francis Kilvert Society, which visits places mentioned in the diaries and also places where he lived.  A John Betjeman BBC television documentary on Kilvert, called Vicar of this Parish, was shown in 1976 and led to Kilvert's Diary being dramatised on British television between 1977 and 1978.  

Born on this day 1918 in Newport

Billy Lucas - Welsh international football player in the late 1940s and 1950s, who made in excess of 400 appearances for Swindon Town, Swansea Town and Newport County.  After his retirement from playing, he managed both Newport County and Swansea Town.  

Born on this day 1946 in Cardiff.

Roger Davis - county cricketer who played for Glamorgan for 13 years as an all-rounder, scoring over 7,000 runs and taking 241 wickets in first-class cricket. In 1968, at Swansea, he fell over the boundary rope, whilst catching the ball, during Gary Sober's breaking  six sixes in one over and became headline news in 1971 when he survived being hit on the head by a ball, which caused his heart and breathing to stop.